tihtavy  of 'the  t:  heolo0ic«l  ^kmimry 

PRINCETOK   •   NEW  JERSEY 


PRESENTED  BY 

Kenneth   L.    I'axwell 

SV4-0  I O 

.L^8 


\CtHHET«    L.  hVAKLWtUL 


NOV    81974 


AL  St^ 


The  New  Opportunities 
of  the  Ministry 


FREDERICK  LYNCH 

Author  of*'  The  Enlargement  of  Life  ^'^  **/s  Life 
Worth  Living y'  «« The  Peace  Problem^''  etc. 


With  Introduction  by 

PROFESSOR  HUGH  BUCK 

of  Union  Theological  Seminary 


New   Tork       Chicago      Toronto 

Fleming  H.  Revell  Cofnpany 

London  and         Edinburgh 


Copyright,  1912,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


New  York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  125  North  Wabash  Ave. 
Toronto:  25  Richmond  Street,  W. 
London:  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh:      100    Princes    Street 


Dedicated  to  the 
memory  of 

Frank  Osborne  Lynch 

who  was  called  home  while  prepaHng 
for  the  mijtistry,  the  opportunities  of 
which  he  clearly  saiv  and  eagerly  desired 


Introduction 

THE  subject  of  this  book  is  surely  one 
of  greatest  importance.  If  the  Ufa 
of  a  nation  does  not  consist  in  the 
abundance  of  the  things  it  possesseth,  no 
material  progress  will  make  up  for  loss  in  the 
deeper  regions.  We  cannot  afTord  to  forego 
the  influence  which  an  institution  like  the 
Church  has  exerted  in  past  generations. 
This  means  a  demand  for  leadership  suited 
to  the  age  in  which  we  live.  It  is  not  so 
much  quantity  that  is  needed  as  quality,  men 
of  intellectual  and  spiritual  attainment  who 
will  be  fit  for  the  new  opportunities. 

The  appeal  is  naturally  made  to  the  best 
of  our  college  men,  who  are  sincerely  seek- 
ing to  offer  their  lives  to  great  purposes. 
Fortunately  the  student  ranks  are  full  of  such 
men,  and  it  only  needs  that  they  should  see 
the  vision  and  be  not  disobedient  to  it.  The  } 
big  tasks  always  attract  big  men,  and  too 
often  the  ministry  has  appeared  small  in  com- 
parison with  some  other  lines  of  work  offered 
to  highly-trained  youth.  It  is  probably  true 
that  of  late  years  the  best  brains  in  America 
5 


6  Introduction 

I  on  the  whole  have  not  been  going  into  pro- 

■  fessions  like  the  ministry  and  teaching.    This* 

has  been  partly  of  necessity,  with  a  continent 
to  subdue  and  exploit,  with  great  engineer- 
ing feats  and  great  commercial  enterprises 
calling  for  leaders.  The  time  has  surely  come 
when  the  unequal  balance  must  be  redressed. 
We  cannot  conserve  even  the  gains  of  civili- 
zation unless  some  heed  is  paid  to  the  call  of 
this  book. 

Mr.  Lynch  has  amply  proved  his  case, 
which  is  to  present  the  opportunities  afforded 
by  the  modern  ministry.  Men  who  want  to 
make  the  most  of  their  lives  must  consider 
the  claims  in  the  various  branches  of  religious 
work.  The  immense  need  for  leadership  in 
education,  in  scholarship,  in  social  adjust- 
ment, in  missionary  enterprise,  which  Mr. 
Lynch  establishes,  itself  constitutes  a  call  to 
some  men.  Phillips  Brooks  shortly  before 
his  death  said  that  the  next  twenty  years 
would  offer  greater  opportunity  for  the  Chris- 
tian minister  than  any  other  like  period  in 
history.  I  think  this  little  book  proves  the 
contention,  presenting  some  of  the  needs  of 
our  time  that  must  be  met  if  we  are  to  make 
true  progress.  Some  of  the  finer  spirits  who 
read  it  will  surely  learn  from  it  a  nobler  con- 
ception of  personal  duty. 


Introduction  7 

There  are  movements  of  our  time  which 
show  the  essentially  religious  character  of  the 
age,  such  as  the  movement  towards  church 
unity,  the  great  missionary  movement,  the 
international  peace  movement,  which  are  all 
Christian  in  spirit  and  motive.  The  whole 
community  also  is  being  pervaded  with  a  new 
sense  of  social  duty.  Nowhere  in  the  world 
are  these  and  similar  movements  more  living 
and  more  wide-spread  than  in  America.  No- 
where also  are  there  arrayed  greater  forces  of 
antagonism  and  keener  problems  for  our 
Christian  civilization.  The  largest  need  of 
to-day  is  a  supply  of  men  who  will  grasp  the 
new  opportunities  of  the  ministry  as  a  sphere 
of  work  and  will  lead  the  Church  in  her 
ever- widening  service.  The  various  types  of 
that  service  are  well  brought  out  in  this 
book,  and  the  urgency  of  the  need  is  empha- 
sized. We  want  men  who  are  prepared  to 
undertake  some  heroic  tasks,  men  of  insight 
and  of  outlook,  of  courage  and  of  consecra- 
tion. The  broad  and  forceful  appeal  of  this 
book  will  surely  not  miss  its  mark. 

Hugh  Black. 

Union  Theological  Seminary, 

New  York  City. 


CONTENTS 

I.  Young  Men  and  the  Ministry 

II.  The  Older  Opportunities    , 

III.  The  New  REi^iGious  Education 

IV.  The  New  Biblical  Scholarship  and  the 

Minister      .... 

V.  The  Challenge  of  the  New  Paganism 

VI.  The  Combating  of  the  New  Atheism 

VII.  The  New  Social  Gospel 

VIII.  Missions  and  the  Call  for  Statesmen 

IX.  The  Challenge  of  the  New  America 

X.  The  Restoration  of  a  United  Church 

XI.  The  Enlarged  Ethical  Opportunity 

XII.  The  New  Evangelism  . 

XIII.  The  Minister  for  To-day    ,         • 


II 

20 
27 

36 
44 
54 
61 

73 

81 

90 

106 

112 

122 


YOUNG  MEN  AND  THE  MINISTRY 

PRACTICAL  and  organized  religion 
rests  upon  the  churches  for  its  being. 
Without  strong  churches  it  would 
wane.  Perhaps  even  religion  itself  would 
gradually  pass  if  all  our  churches  were  to  be 
closed,  for  religion  rests  more  on  common 
worship  than  we  realize.  Where  there  is  no 
common  worship,  and  no  preaching  of  the 
truth,  even  humanitarian  instincts  pale  and 
philanthropic  service  ceases.  An  indication 
of  this  can  be  seen  in  the  fact  that  those  peo- 
ple who  cease  attending  church,  with  a  few 
notable  exceptions,  soon  cease  serving  man. 
In  most  cases  the  Sunday  automobile  soon 
displaces  the  teaching  of  the  class  of  children. 
Our  religion,  our  reform,  and  our  service  of 
humanity,  rest  ultimately  upon  the  firm 
foundation  of  worshipping  assemblies  in- 
structed in  the  truth  of  God.  And  for  such 
churches  the  ablest  and  most  prophetic  men 
are  needed  in  our  day. 

But   from   every  side  there  rises  the  wail 
that  the  attendance  at  the  theological  semi- 
II 


12     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

naries  is  falling  off.  And  from  churches 
comes  the  cry  that  not  only  are  there  not 
enough  able  men  to  fill  the  pulpits,  but  not 
enough  of  any  kind.  Even  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  is  getting  desperate  over 
the  decreasing  number  of  candidates  for  the 
priesthood,  and  almost  every  denomination 
has  echoed  the  complaint  with  more  or  less 
emphasis.  Seminaries  that  once  had  one 
hundred  students  now  have  only  twenty-five. 
And  sometimes  a  careful  study  of  seminary 
catalogues  shows  that  some  of  these  are  tak- 
ing special  courses  and  not  preparing  to  be 
actual  pastors  of  churches. 

At  the  same  time  the  complaint  is  made 
that  many  of  the  best  and  brightest  of  our 
college  men  are  not  even  considering  the 
ministry.  This  does  not  mean  that  the  six 
men  out  of  the  class  of  two  hundred  are  not 
among  the  ablest,  but  that  the  other  fifty 
able  men  are  not  turning  towards  the  ministry 
as  a  profession.  The  next  class  from  Yale, 
to  mention  only  one  large  university,  will 
probably  not  send  ten  men  into  the  ministry, 
while  it  will  send  sixty  into  the  law  and  cor- 
respondingly large  numbers  into  teaching, 
business  and  medicine.  One  cannot  help 
viewing  this  with  alarm,  although  perhaps 
the  facts  have  been  somewhat  exaggerated. 


Young  Men  and  the  Ministry        13 

It  is  interesting  to  seek  the  causes  of  this 
decline  in  candidates  for  the  ministry.  Much 
has  been  written  upon  the  subject,  and  most 
of  it  is  far  from  the  point.  Some  have  said 
that  it  is  because  of  credal  tests,  and  because 
the  Church  clings  to  an  old  attitude  towards 
truth,  while  the  colleges  pursue  a  new  and 
opposite  way.  The  churches  pose  as  guard- 
ians of  a  truth  already  revealed,  and  close  their 
doors  to  the  unending  quest  or  the  discussion 
of  the  modern  revelation  of  God,  whereas  the 
college  approaches  all  truth  in  the  scientific 
spirit,  which  is  equally  ready  to  abandon  the 
old  or  the  new,  or  accept  the  old  or  the  new, 
if  it  can  be  proven.  The  answer  to  this  rea- 
son is  twofold.  In  the  first  place,  the  de- 
nominations which  have  a  practically  free 
pulpit  are  suffering  as  much  from  the  dearth 
of  ministers  as  are  the  most  orthodox  sects  ; 
and  in  the  second  place,  the  average  senior 
in  college  has  never  thought  his  way  through 
to  any  such  weighing  and  balancing  of  the 
facts.  He  is  generally  much  of  a  boy.  An- 
other reason  often  given  is  that  the  young 
men  of  to-day  are  not  sure  of  any  religious 
truth.     The  mental  atmosphere  of  the  college  | 

shakes  their  belief  in  the  old  truths  and  gives  ^ 

nothing  positive  in  their  place.     They  desire 
to  serve  man,  but  have  no  gospel  to  preach. 


14     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

Dr.  Lyman  Abbott  once  referred  to  this  fact 
in  connection  with  his  residence  at  Harvard 
University  as  college  preacher.  He  said 
that  many  of  the  students  who  came  to  him 
wished  to  render  Christian  service,  but  did 
not  want  to  preach,  as  they  did  not  feel  sure 
of  the  Christian  doctrines.  They  were  sure 
of  the  Christ  life  but  not  of  the  Christ  mes- 
sage. Here  again  there  are  facts  that  make 
this  reason  at  least  only  partially  true  ;  for  in 
many  of  our  colleges  it  is  those  very  men 
who  have  been  most  active  in  college  in 
teaching  Bible  classes  and  speaking  at  mis- 
sion halls,  who  do  not  choose  the  ministry  as 
a  profession.  Yet  there  is  doubtless  some 
truth  in  this  contention. 

The  real  reasons  are  to  be  found  in  other 
directions.  There  are  three  influences  at 
work  which  are  the  chief  agencies  in  turning 
young  men  from  the  ministry.  The  first  is 
the  pull  of  other  professions  upon  men  who 
once  would  have  naturally  turned  towards 
the  Church.  There  have  come  into  being  in 
the  last  fifty  years  a  number  of  professions, 
which  ofiFer  large  fields  of  Christian  service, 
without  the  seeming  restraints  of  the  min- 
istry, and  demand  less  creative  work.  There 
is  the  great  Young  Men's  Christian  Asso- 
ciation   movement.     There    is    the    univer- 


Young  Men  and  the  Ministry         15 

sity  settlement.  There  are  the  great  philan- 
thropic institutions.  In  New  York  there 
is  a  School  of  Philanthropy  to  fit  men  for 
service  regardless  of  creed,  and  without  the 
task  of  preaching  before  them.  Then  too, 
the  teaching  profession  has  risen  to  as  high 
a  rank  as  the  ministry,  and  has  become 
as  permanent  a  work.  It  is  attracting  hun- 
dreds of  young  men  who  once  would  have 
turned  to  the  ministry.  There  are  many 
other  avenues  of  service  opening  which  our 
fathers  never  knew.  All  of  these  are  calling 
for  our  best  college  men. 

The  second  reason  is  the  temptation  to  seek 
careers  and  large  incomes  that  certain  pro- 
fessions and  businesses  are  offering  in  our 
cities  to  young  college  men,  who  have  al- 
ready been  toliched  by  the  materialism  of  the 
age.  The  materialism  reaches  back  into  our 
colleges.  The  senior  used  to  study  philos- 
ophy, and  then  thought  of  the  ministry,  which 
is  the  office  where  one  helps  men  shape  a 
worthy  philosophy  of  life — a  philosophy  based 
on  idealism.  Now  he  studies  insurance,  bank- 
ing, commercial  law,  and  politics,  and  looks 
forward  to  business  or  law  as  his  career. 
Sometimes  it  seems  as  though  more  than  half 
of  any  large  college  class  turns  towards  law 
and  business.     Law  is  the  straight  road  to  po- 


l6     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

litical  office  and  large  incomes.  The  cost  of 
living  has  gone  up.  Standards  of  living  are 
much  higher.  But  worst  of  all,  the  interest 
in  religious  things  has  been  crowded  out  of 
many  of  these  young  men  by  the  great  domi- 
nance of  business  and  the  industrial  life  of  our 
day.  Things  are  much  more  real  to  them  than 
thought  and  ideals.  Many  have  become  so 
atrophied  that  there  is  no  response  to  things 
of  the  spirit.  If  any  one  disputes  this  he  has 
only  to  go  to  one  of  our  great  universities  for 
a  week  and  see  what  subjects  are  uppermost. 
The  universities  are  not  helping  here  as  they 
should.  Most  of  them  seem  reluctant  to  say 
anything  about  religion,  or  to  have  anything 
to  do  with  it.  With  one  or  two  exceptions 
no  large  university  is  doing  anything  offi- 
cially to  turn  the  minds  of  its  students  towards 
the  Church. 

The  third  reason  is  that  the  Church  and  the 
ministry  have  come  to  be  looked  upon  with 
a  sort  of  contempt  by  many  college  men. 
This  is  pardy  due  to  the  world's  attitude ;  it 
is  pardy  due  to  the  Church  itself.  The  world 
has  become  so  dominated  by  material  terms, 
so  accustomed  to  think  and  feel  under  the 
sense  of  things,  that  it  has  lost  power  to 
rightly  value  spiritual  qualities  and  ideals. 
It  rather  despises  ideals.     It  calls  the  minister 


Young  Men  and  the  Ministry         17 

impractical,  a  sentimentalist,  a  dreamer.  He 
does  not  get  down  to  the  level  of  men  and 
get  results.  Consequently  he  is  put  off  one 
committee  after  another,  and  business  men, 
that  is,  ''practical"  men,  are  substituted  in 
his  place.  The  college  man  sees  this.  He 
sees  the  minister  seemingly  becoming  more 
and  more  discounted.  He  does  not  seem  to 
hold  the  commanding  place  the  lawyer  and 
business  man,  and  especially  the  college  presi- 
dent, hold  in  the  community.  The  student 
is  not  old  enough  to  reason  through  this  and 
see  that  it  is  largely  only  seeming,  and  at 
any  rate  but  a  sign  of  the  times  which  will 
soon  pass. 

With  this  there  has  been  so  much  self- 
depreciation  by  the  Church  and  the  ministry 
themselves  that  it  has  greatly  added  to  this 
unexpressed  feeling  in  the  collegian's  mind. 
Every  other  minister  he  hears  tells  him  how 
he  can  serve  God  in  some  other  profession 
just  as  well.  Then  some  minister  minimizes 
the  office  in  his  hearing,  claiming  for  it  only 
the  place  of  a  first-class  organizer  or  admin- 
istrator, and  even  apologizing  for  sermons. 
No  young  man  is  going  to  devote  his  life  to 
preaching  sermons  after  hearing  two  or  three 
ministers  joke  about  them.  The  truth  is 
that  if  we  want  the  best  young  men  for  the 


l8     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

ministry,  every  minister  must  magnify  the 
office  to  the  utmost  and  claim  for  it  the  su- 
preme place,  which  is  its  rightful  place.  And 
the  Church  must  make  more  claims  for  itself. 
It  must  take  more  pains  to  seek  young  men 
for  its  ministry,  and,  above  all,  young  men 
must  be  taught  how  great  and  wonderful  an 
institution  it  is  and  may  become.  It  is  time 
the  Church  awoke  and  saw  that  every  young 
man  in  its  congregations  and  schools  receives 
instruction  as  to  its  greatness,  power,  and  op- 
portunity. Is  there  a  church  in  any  com- 
munity that  is  actually  engaged  in  any  way  in 
securing  the  best  young  men  for  the  ministry  ? 
There  are  a  few  ministers  doing  this,  but  very 
few.  But  whose  care  is  it  if  not  that  of  the 
Church  ? 

It  is  because  this  hesitancy  to  enter  the 
ministry  exists,  and  because  there  is  some- 
thing of  a  feeling  in  the  minds  of  many  col- 
lege students  that  the  ministry  does  not  offer 
the  opportunity  that  once  it  did,  nor  so  great 
opportunity  as  the  other  professions,  that  the 
author  wishes  to  address  a  few  chapters  to  col- 
lege students  to  show  them  that  the  Church 
never  offered  such  superb  and  splendid  op- 
portunities of  service  as  she  does  to-day  ;  that 
the  pulpit  never  presented  such  commanding 
opportunity  for  great  hearts  and  prophetic 


Young  Men  and  the  Ministry         19 

minds  as  to-day  it  offers  ;  that  the  ministry 
never  challenged  the  bravest  and  most  de- 
voted men  as  it  does  to-day  ;  and  that  no  pro- 
fession presents  quite  such  scope  for  large 
leadership  and  full  development  of  manhood 
as  the  ministry  offers  at  this  day  and  hour. 
He  also  hopes  that  many  ministers  reading 
these  pages  will  be  confirmed  in  the  calling 
they  have  chosen  and  may  more  zealously 
devote  themselves  to  training  young  men  of 
promise  to  be  prophets  of  the  Lord. 


11 

THE  OLDER  OPPORTUNITIES 

IN  the  introductory  chapter  the  author 
called  attention  to  the  evident  reluc- 
tance of  many  of  our  brightest  young 
men  to  enter  the  ministry,  and  gave  what 
seemed  to  him  the  chief  reasons  for  that 
hesitancy.  In  this  chapter,  before  proceed- 
ing to  show  the  new  and  enlarging  scope  of 
the  minister's  office,  he  wants  to  say  that 
even  those  tasks  and  opportunities  which 
have  always  accompanied  the  minister's 
office,  offer  still  larger  scope  for  lasting  and 
]  fruitful  influence,  as  well  as  for  personal 
j  enrichment,  than  any  other  profession  or 
occupation  open  to  him,  not  even  excepting 
that  of  the  editor.  For  the  editor,  while  he 
reaches  more  hearers  than  the  preacher, 
lacks  the  power  which  personality  adds  to 
words,  and  misses  the  opportunity  to  enter 
into  close,  friendly  relationships,  which  is 
the  secret  of  all  greatest  influence. 

The  two  functions  which  have  always  been 
associated  with  the  preacher's  office  have 
been  those  of  teaching  and  pastoral  visita- 


The  Older  Opportunities  21 

tion.  Let  us  speak  of  the  teaching  first. 
The  Christian  Church  began  with  the  ap- 
pointing of  twelve  men  to  go  into  different 
sections  of  the  world  to  preach  and  teach. 
They  were  to  tell  good  news  everywhere 
they  went,  proclaim  the  birth  of  some  new 
force  that  had  entered  into  humanity  with 
transforming  power,  declare  liberation  to  all 
who  were  bound  by  chains  of  their  own  or 
of  others'  forging,  and  show  them  the  author 
of  this  remarkable  message.  This  was  their 
preaching.  Then  they  were  to  continue  to 
instruct  those  who  remained  to  listen,  in 
the  truths  which  Christ  had  spoken.  These 
truths  were  that  God  is  love,  fatherly  in  His 
nature,  and  that  His  will  was  good-will 
towards  all  men  ;  that  He  freely  forgave  the 
repentant  man ;  that  the  brotherly  and  co- 
operative disposition  was  the  only  true  basis 
of  relationship  between  men  ;  that  true  right- 
eousness was  in  a  new  and  beneficent  dis- 
position, rather  than  in  a  formal  obedience 
to  rules  and  laws;  that  happiness  came 
from  purity,  mercy  and  service  rather 
than  from  insistence  on  rights,  or  getting 
many  things  ;  that  the  purpose  of  Christ  was 
to  establish  God's  kingdom  on  the  earth  ;  that 
He  had  come  from  God  to  lay  its  deep  foun- 
dations and  that  God  called  all  men  to  work 


22     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

in  partnership  with  Him  in  the  rearing  of  the 
beautiful  city,  whose  foundations  are  right- 
eousness, joy  and  peace.  These  first  twelve 
ministers  went  everywhere  preaching  and 
teaching  these  things.  No  men  in  history, 
with  the  exception  of  their  own  Master,  have 
had  the  shaping  of  civilization  in  their 
hands  as  had  these  men.  Modern  civiliza- 
tion is  the  product  of  these  men  and  their 
successors.  The  influence  of  kings  or  states- 
men or  great  warriors  has  been  little  com- 
pared with  the  transformation  wrought  in 
the  world's  history  by  these  preachers  of 
the  Gospel  and  teachers  of  the  Christian 
ethics.  Practically  all  of  the  great  move- 
ments and  reforms  now  coming  to  fulfillment 
in  the  world  had  their  origin  in  this  preaching. 
From  that  day  to  this  there  has  been  an 
unbroken  line  of  these  preachers.  They 
have  carried  this  same  message  to  every 
land  and  taught  this  same  truth  in  every 
hamlet  of  Christendom.  It  has  been  their 
work  that  has  turned  pagan  lands  into 
brotherhoods,  that  has  lifted  men  out  of 
beasthood  into  manhood.  It  has  been  their 
words  that  have  liberated  both  the  souls  and 
bodies  of  men.  It  has  not  been  emperor  nor 
warrior  that  has  freed  men  from  slavery, 
but  preachers — men  like  Luther,  Knox  and 


The  Older  Opportunities  23 

Beecher.  When  again  and  again  the  dark- 
ness of  paganism  seemed  about  to  be  sv/eep- 
ing  Christianity  and  virtue  out  of  Europe,  it 
was  the  preacher  who  saved  men  from  its 
withering  blasts — such  men  as  Augusdne, 
Chrysostom,  Peter  the  Hermit,  Bernard,  St. 
Francis,  Savonarola  and  Wesley.  So  it  has 
always  been.  It  has  been  the  words  of 
preachers,  of  the  humble  as  well  as  of  these 
great  ones,  which,  in  every  hamlet,  have  in- 
spired men  to  service  and  noble  living, 
brought  them  to  follow  the  Lord  of  all  true 
life,  freed  them  from  doubts,  fears  and  super- 
stitions, sustained  them  in  the  face  of  dis- 
couragement and  nourished  them  in  all  true 
manliness. 

What  greater  task  can  any  man  render 
humanity  to-day  than  tell  it  those  things, 
teach  it  those  truths,  and  lift  it  to  those 
heights?  And  yet  this  is  the  opportunity  of 
the  preacher  to-day  as  it  has  always  been. 
There  confronts  him  every  week  a  large 
group  of  men  who  have  practically  the  same 
needs  as  the  men  who  hung  upon  the  words 
of  Paul  or  John.  There  remains  the  same 
need  of  the  transfiguration  of  humanity  to 
save  the  state.  Who  has  this  opportunity  as 
has  the  preacher?  To  what  other  man  do 
hundreds   come  every  week  to  be  taught? 


24     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

The  author  has  to  seek  his  audience,  the  ed- 
itor has  to  send  his  paper  far  and  wide,  the 
tractarian  has  to  distribute  his  pamphlets ; 
but  to  the  preacher,  if  he  has  a  true  message, 
the  people  come.  And  what  a  large,  im- 
measurable, varied  scope  of  influence  is  be- 
fore the  preacher  as  he  faces  those  five  hun- 
dred people.  The  teacher  meets  a  few  of  one 
age  or  rank  from  week  to  week,  and  is  con- 
fined to  teaching  his  one  subject — that  often 
having  little  relation  to  the  deepest  hu- 
man needs.  But  the  preacher  faces  almost 
every  need  known  to  man  in  that  morning's 
congregation.  Before  him  is  every  age, 
every  temperament,  victims  of  every  sin,  dis- 
couraged men  and  perplexed  men,  men  who 
are  slaves  of  materialism  and  of  greed,  agnos- 
tics, lonely  ones,  those  just  beginning  life,  those 
just  ending  it.  What  opportunity  is  there  any- 
where on  earth,  or  what  service  equal  to  that 
now  facing  the  man  in  the  pulpit — to  lift  all  of 
that  mixed  multitude,  that  crowd  of  men  out 
of  harmony  with  God,  up  on  to  the  high  levels 
of  the  soul,  up  into  the  world  of  the  spirit,  up 
to  idealism  again,  putting  them  again  into 
tune  with  the  Infinite,  sending  them  forth 
brave,  hopeful,  new  men  to  face  a  new  world. 
But  this  is  the  eternal  opportunity  of  the 
preacher.     Even  if  the  ministry  offered  no 


The  Older  Opportunities  25 

more  than  this  older  opportunity,  it  is  still 
greater  than  any  other  we  know. 

We  shall  not  mention  here  all  those  other 
functions  which  the  ministry  has  always  ex- 
ercised so  splendidly  in  connection  with  its 
preaching-,  such  as  the  leadership  in  great 
movements,  the  writing  of  widely  read  books, 
the  inception  of  new  forms  of  the  kingdom 
of  God,  the  directing  of  the  larger  work  of 
the  denominations,  for  we  want  to  take  them 
up  later  in  connection  with  their  newer  as- 
pects. But  we  want  to  say  a  word  here 
about  that  other  older  function  of  the  minis- 
ter's work — pastoral  visitation.  There  is  a 
tendency  in  our  day  to  belittle  it.  Some  men 
think  it  beneath  real  manhood  and  joke  about 
ministers  spending  afternoons  gossiping.  But 
this  is  not  the  real  work  of  the  pastor  and  it 
is  the  smallest  part  of  it.  His  work  is  to  be 
the  friend  of  men — and  most  men  need  be- 
friending at  some  time  in  their  lives.  There 
is  no  nobler  office,  neither  is  there  one  that 
touches  it  in  influence — this  befriending  of  all 
men.  The  pastor  begins  with  the  boys  and 
girls  and  may  become  their  most  desired 
companion.  He  is  the  adviser  of  the  young 
men  and  young  women  as  they  face  life.  He 
finds  the  bright  boys  and  sends  them  to  col- 
lege, or  to  the  right  trade.     There  has  been 


26     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

nothing  more  praiseworthy  or  more  rewarding 
than  the  life  of  the  Scotch  pastors  in  this  re- 
gard. The  universities  have  always  been  full 
of  talented  boys  they  have  discovered  in 
every  glen  and  hamlet  and  whom  they  often 
have  tutored  in  Latin  and  Greek  themselves. 
Every  walk  of  life  and  every  profession, 
in  Great  Britain  and  America,  is  adorned  by 
these  boys,  and  they  are  among  the  leaders 
of  the  world's  thought  and  progress.  The 
stories  of  the  Scotch  writers,  especially  those  of 
Ian  MacLaren,  Barrie,  and  Crockett,  are  replete 
with  instances  of  the  remarkable  influence  of 
these  country  pastors.  There  is  an  unparal- 
lelled  sphere  of  influence  in  this  comradeship 
with  boys  and  youth.  Strong  men  come  to  the 
pastor  with  all  their  hopes  and  fears.  Those 
who  have  no  friend  find  in  him  a  friend  of 
the  friendless.  By  friendly  conversation  with 
young  men  he  determines  their  whole  atti- 
tude towards  men  and  their  philosophy  of 
life.  No  one  has  just  the  same  opportu- 
nity of  befriending  men  that  the  pastor  has. 
No  one  can  thus  so  modify  the  spirit  and  life 
of  a  whole  community.  It  is  hard  to  con- 
ceive of  men  more  influencing  any  locality 
than  Kingsley  did  Eversly,  or  than  Baxter 
did  Kidderminster,  or  than  Keble  did  Hurs- 
Sy,  or  than  George  Herbert  did  Bemerton. 


Ill 

THE  NEW  RELIGIOUS  EDUCATION 

IN  the  preceding  chapter  the  author  called 
attention  to  some  of  the  older  opportuni- 
ties of  the  ministry  and  showed  how 
they  offered  opportunity  worthy  of  the  ablest 
men  and  a  scope  of  influence  offered  by  no 
other  profession.  In  this  chapter  he  wishes 
to  begin  the  consideration  of  some  of  those 
newer  opportunities  which  ought  especially 
to  challenge  the  attention  of  young  men 
who  want  to  put  their  lives  where  they  will 
count  for  most  in  the  uplift  of  the  world.  He 
does  not  mean  to  infer  that  the  ministry  has 
not  been  doing  splendidly  for  a  century  some 
of  the  things  mentioned  here.  It  is  only  that 
science  has  so  revolutionized  all  our  methods 
of  thinking  and  our  approach  to  the  old 
problems  that  they  have  become  practically 
new.  Also  some  new  problems  have  arisen, 
peculiar  to  our  own  time,  which  are  vaster 
in  their  scope  than  any  the  fathers  knew, 
because  we  have  come  upon  a  more  complex 
civilization  and  a  greatly  expanded  world. 
Hardly  any  problem  is  local  any  longer. 
27 


28     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

Neighbourhood  has  become  world-wide. 
These  facts  change  the  whole  face  of  old 
problems  as  well  as  introduce  new  ones. 
There  has  also  been  great  change  of  emphasis 
in  recent  years  on  things  which  have  always 
been  part  of  the  churches'  task.  The  result 
has  been  that  the  minister  faces  a  group  of 
new  problems  which  demand  the  wisdom  of 
a  statesman,  the  training  of  the  most  scien- 
tific education,  and  the  moral  passion  of  a 
prophet.  And  the  fact  that  all  the  theological 
seminaries  have  not  yet  adjusted  their  cur- 
riculum to  properly  train  the  ablest  men  to 
meet  these  new  conditions  makes  the  chal- 
lenge come  with  even  stronger  appeal  to 
brave  men. 

One  of  the  most  outstanding  of  these  new 
opportunities  is  that  of  being  a  pioneer  in  the 
modern  religious  education  movement.  The 
Church  has  always  been  interested  in 
religious  education.  Catechetical  classes 
were  of  very  early  origin.  Young  converts 
were  grounded  in  the  Christian  doctrine. 
Luther  laid  greatest  stress  on  the  religious 
training  of  children,  and  he  insisted  that  it 
be  of  the  most  thorough  sort.  In  Germany 
to-day,  practically  every  child  in  the  nation 
is  taught  religion  at  the  same  time  that  he  is 
taught  arithmetic.     In  our  own  country  the 


The  New  Religious  Education        29 

Sunday-school  has  become  an  integral  part 
of  every  church  and  has  acquainted  millions 
of  children  with  the  Bible,  and  led  them  into 
the  church,  and  awakened  in  their  hearts  the 
desire  to  follow  Christ  in  the  serviceful  life. 
These  Sunday-schools  have  differed  from  one 
another  greatly,  according  to  the  ability  and 
interest  of  the  pastor,  and  especially  accord- 
ing to  his  alertness  to  the  new  educational 
science.  But  in  even  the  worst  managed 
Sunday-school  the  pupil  learned  something 
of  the  Bible  and  always  ran  the  chance  of 
coming  under  the  spell  of  some  helpful  or 
beautiful  personality  among  his  teachers. 
Along  with  the  growth  of  the  Sunday-school 
there  has  come  into  being  a  great  educational 
literature  devoted  to  the  study  of  the  Scrip- 
tures. Most  of  this  literature  has  consisted 
of  quarterlies  and  teachers'  aids,  following 
the  lessons  of  the  International  Committee. 
Here  again  these  have  been  good,  bad,  and 
indifferent.  Practically  all  scholars  are  to- 
day feeling  that  the  choice  of  lessons  was 
not  always  wise  and  that  it  was  impossible 
to  teach  infants  and  grandfathers  the  same 
lesson  in  the  same  way.  The  International 
Committee  has  gone  so  far  as  to  introduce 
graded  lessons,  but  much  yet  remains  to  be 
done.     Many  of  the  lesson  helps  have  utterly 


30     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

disregarded  results  of  modern  scholarship — 
even  those  which  have  been  universally 
accepted.  Yet  there  has  been  a  great  deal 
of  religious  education  going  on. 

But  meantime,  while  the  Sunday-school 
has  in  many  instances  remained  in  its 
methods  just  where  it  was  fifty  years  ago, 
there  have  been  such  strides  in  educational 
science  in  the  day-schools  and  colleges  that 
one  can  hardly  keep  pace  with  the  advance. 
The  whole  educational  theory  has  been  trans- 
formed. The  text-books  have  been  rewritten 
from  an  absolutely  new  point  of  view.  The 
schools  have  been  carefully  graded  from 
the  kindergarten  to  the  university.  New 
methods  of  teaching  have  been  introduced. 
One  who  attended  school  forty  years  ago 
would  hardly  recognize  a  school  of  to-day  as  a 
school,  were  he  to  visit  it.  The  teachers  have 
received  the  finest  training.  In  our  great 
cities  no  one  is  allowed  to  teach  who  has  not 
had  a  long  discipline  in  teaching.  There 
are  regular  colleges  for  teachers,  where,  after 
having  received  their  academic  degree  else- 
where, they  go  to  study  how  to  teach  what 
they  have  learned.  A  great  educational 
science  has  sprung  up  with  an  enormous 
literature.  Every  university  has  its  chair  of 
pedagogy.     But  most  interesting  of  all,  the 


The  New  Religious  Education        31 

best  young  men  of  the  nation  are  giving 
their  lives  to  this  new  educational  move- 
ment. Not  only  are  they  entering  it  as 
teachers,  but  every  community  now  desires  a 
superintendent  of  schools  trained  in  the  new 
science. 

During  the  last  twenty-five  years — perhaps 
more — the  most  prophetic  men  in  the  Church 
have  recognized  the  fact  that  there  was  this 
new  science  of  education  and  that  for  the 
Church  to  ignore  it  meant  ultimate  suicide 
to  her  whole  educational  work.  It  would 
not  be  long  before  the  very  children  them- 
selves would  notice  the  vast  difference  be- 
tween the  methods  and  the  teachers  of  the 
two  schools  they  were  attending.  But  more 
than  that,  these  men  saw  that  the  new  edu- 
cational methods  were  a  step  in  advance, 
were  a  great  gain,  that  they  were  a  part  of  the 
progress  that  all  science  was  making.  They 
saw  that  the  children  were  receiving  great 
gain  from  these  highly-trained  teachers,  and 
carefully  chosen  lessons,  adapted  to  their 
minds.  One  sign  of  it  was  a  new  interest  in 
the  schools  on  the  part  of  the  children.  As 
a  result  of  this,  these  men — such  men  as 
President  William  R.  Harper,  Dr.  Erastus 
Blakeslee,  and  Prof.  Frank  K.  Sanders — 
began  to  agitate  the  introduction  of  the  new 


32     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

educational  methods  into  the  Sunday-schools 
and  pastors'  classes.  The  result  has  been  a 
complete  revival  of  interest  in  religious  edu- 
cation. Dr.  Blakeslee  began  issuing  Sun- 
day-school lessons  based  on  the  new  educa- 
tional science,  and  rendered  an  inestimable 
service  to  the  whole  Church.  The  Religious 
Education  Association  came  into  being  and 
at  its  conferences  the  leading  educators  and 
prophetic  ministers  have  made  most  valuable 
contributions  to  the  new  science.  The  Inter- 
national Lesson  Committee  has  begun  to 
grade  its  lessons  and  to  adapt  its  courses  to 
the  varying  needs  of  the  schools.  A  litera- 
ture of  religious  education  has  come  into 
being,  and  the  theological  seminaries,  in 
some  instances,  are  devoting  much  attention 
to  training  young  men  to  teach  religion. 

The  movement  is  rising  and  growing  rap- 
idly. The  churches  are  awakening  to  the 
fact  that  the  religious  education  of  the  child 
is  the  most  important  task  it  has  upon  its 
hands.  It  is  devoting  more  and  more  time 
to  the  Sunday-school.  The  science  of  relig- 
ious education  has  been  born.  It  will  grow 
as  rapidly  as  the  new  education  has  grown 
in  the  colleges.  The  Church  must  have  the 
best  the  college  has.  The  Sunday-school  is 
going  to  be  reorganized  until  it  will  compare 


The  New  Religious  Education        33 

favourably  with  the  best  public  school  in  the 
city  in  its  appointments,  grading,  teaching, 
and  methods.  Its  teachers  are  going  to  be 
carefully  chosen  and  have  some  training  in 
imparting  knowledge  and  in  child  psychol- 
ogy. Every  Sunday-school  will  have  a 
teachers'  library  of  the  growing  literature  of 
religious  education. 

But  it  is  all  new,  and  here  is  the  point : 
this  movement  calls  for  the  wisest  and  ablest 
leadership — as  able  leadership  as  the  new 
science  has  had  in  the  public  schools  and 
colleges.  The  churches  will  soon  be  clam- 
ouring for  men  capable  of  coming  into  the 
parish  and  putting  the  Sunday-school  on  the 
most  modern  and  scientific  basis.  Parents 
themselves  are  going  to  demand  that  the 
Church  be  as  efificient  in  its  teaching  of  re- 
ligion to  their  children  as  the  grammar 
school  is  in  teaching  them  geography. 
What  an  opportunity  for  the  college  man 
who  wants  to  undertake  some  new  and  pio- 
neering task,  and  exert  a  commanding  in- 
fluence !  And  if  the  human  element  of 
ambition  enters  in  a  little,  no  field  offers  a 
greater  opportunity  for  eminence  than  this 
of  religious  education,  because  it  is  so  new, 
and  so  few  have  entered  it.  But  what  a 
challenging  task  to  go  into  a  parish  and  take 


34     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

a  Sunday-school  of  five  hundred  pupils  and 
fifty  teachers  and  put  it  on  the  basis  of  the 
best  boys'  school  or  public  school  of  the 
nation  !  What  an  inspiration  to  meet  these 
fifty  teachers  every  week  and  instruct  them 
not  only  in  the  results  of  the  best  Biblical 
scholarship  but  also  in  the  latest  educational 
science !  What  a  pleasure  to  see  such  a 
school,  as  religious,  too,  in  its  spirit,  as  was 
the  old,  graduating  all  its  senior  classes  into 
the  Church,  year  by  year ! 

But  the  young  minister's  work  in  the  new 
religious  education  will  not  stop  here.  For 
soon  the  Church  is  going  to  take  much  of  the 
money  it  is  now  spending  on  quartette  choirs 
and  other  things,  and  put  it  where  it  will  do 
infinitely  more  good  for  the  kingdom  of  God 
— on  the  thorough  religious  education  of  the 
children. 

The  Sunday-school  is  not  enough.  The 
pastor  himself,  and  his  assistant  pastors  will 
meet  every  child  weekly  and  instruct  him  in 
church  history,  Christian  doctrine,  the  heroes 
of  the  faith.  Christian  ethics,  in  the  things  the 
Church  to-day  is  accomplishing  both  at  home 
and  abroad,  and  in  the  meaning  of  the  Church 
which  he  is  soon  to  join.  Practically  every 
child  in  the  parish  will  be  won  for  the  Church 
and  the  higher  life,  when  the  Church  turns  to 


The  New  Religious  Education        3^ 

this  thing.  And  it  is  turning.  Here  is  a 
superb  opportunity  for  the  best  trained  col- 
lege men  to  change  the  whole  character  of 
a  church  and  make  it  a  great  university  of 
religion  where  every  child  shall  become  as 
thoroughly  grounded  in  all  that  pertains  to 
religion  as  he  is  in  the  history  of  the  United 
States.  And  why  not  have  classes  also  for 
the  adults,  in  religious  history  and  the  appli- 
cation of  Christianity  to  modern  social  prob- 
lems, and  especially  in  the  Bible  ?  The  au- 
thor cannot  conceive  of  any  present  opening 
offering  more  opportunity  for  leadership  than 
this. 


IV 


THE  NEW  BIBLICAL  SCHOLARSHIP  AND 
THE  MINISTER 

FOR  over  fifty  years  the  storms  have 
raged  about  the  Old  Testament.  The 
findings  of  geology  first  disturbed  our 
fathers,  because  they  seemed  to  discredit  the 
Biblical  story  of  creation.  The  earth  was 
created  not  in  seven  days,  as  Genesis  averred, 
but  by  a  long  process  covering  perhaps  many 
millions  of  aeons.  Animals  lay  petrified  deep 
under  the  mountains  ages  before  the  first 
creative  day  of  Genesis.  Then  came  Darwin 
with  his  theory  of  evolution,  and  this  seemed 
to  completely  sweep  not  only  the  Bible,  but 
God  Himself,  out  of  existence.  Not  only  was 
man  not  created  in  the  mechanical  fashion  of 
Genesis,  but  it  was  doubtful  if  he  was  created 
at  all.  He  might  be  a  spontaneous  emana- 
tion of  the  universe.  Anyhow,  he  was  a 
product  of  a  long  evolution,  a  process  of 
growth  from  the  first  cell  of  life  up  to  the  per- 
fect man.  It  is  perhaps  impossible  for  us 
moderns  to  realize  what  a  blank  universe 
faced  many  Christians  when  the  facts  of  evo- 
lution were  announced,  or  through  what  a 
36 


Biblical  Scholarship  and  the  Minister     37 

maze    of    perplexities    they    had    to    walk. 
Everything  seemed  to  have  been  shaken. 

Almost  at  the  same  time,  the  new  his- 
torical science  arose,  and  investigations  in 
Egypt  and  the  East  revealed  an  antiquity  of 
civilization  dating  far  back  beyond  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Biblical  cosmogony.  Hardly 
had  the  Church  recovered  from  these  shocks 
before  the  new  Biblical  scholarship  began  to 
influence  England,  Scotland,  and  the  United 
States.  It  came  from  Germany  and  was 
called  the  "  Higher  Criticism  " — that  is,  the 
criticism  or  study  which  dealt  with  the  con- 
tents of  the  book  itself,  as  distinguished  from 
the  ''  Lower  Criticism,"  which  dealt  simply 
with  textual  questions.  This  new  scholarship 
swept  Great  Britain  and  America  like  a  flood. 
Books  from  the  German  were  translated  faster 
than  men  could  read  them.  In  Scotland, 
Robertson  Smith  adopted  the  views  and  soon 
they  reached  the  ears  of  the  people.  In  Eng- 
land, Coleridge  and  Thomas  Arnold  and  Dean 
Stanley  followed  in  the  footsteps  of  the  Ger- 
mans, although  a  book  from  Bishop  Colenzo, 
of  South  Africa  (written  independently  of 
German  scholarship  but  arriving  at  the  same 
conclusions),  had  greatly  stirred  all  England 
before  this.  In  this  country  such  men  as 
Washington  Gladden,  Theodore  T.  Munger, 


38     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

and  Newman  Smyth  popularized  these  new 
views. 

This  higher  criticism  called  for  a  prac- 
tically new  Bible.  It  said  that  Genesis  was 
not  strict  history  but  only  poetry ;  that  the 
historical  books  showed  signs  of  many  au- 
thors; that  the  laws  of  Israel  were  a  prod- 
uct of  growth  and  national  legislation,  as 
were  the  laws  of  any  land ;  that  the  Psalms 
were  the  hymns  of  the  Jewish  Church,  and 
came  from  many  sources  and  were  written 
by  many  men ;  that  the  prophecies  were  the 
sermons  of  Israel's  great  lay  preachers  ;  that 
many  of  the  books  were  of  much  later  date 
than  had  been  supposed  ;  above  all,  that  both 
the  revelation  and  morality  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment were  progressive,  and  that  the  authority 
of  any  part  of  the  Bible  must  be  determined 
by  its  place  in  this  progression.  Again  the 
whole  Church  was  thrown  into  confusion,  a 
turmoil  from  which  it  has  only  just  emerged. 
But  through  all  these  shocks  and  blows,  these 
perplexities  and  chaotic  times,  the  people  have 
come  safely,  and  the  Christian  faith  is  more 
firmly  grounded  than  ever.  It  is  seen  by 
everybody  that  a  theory  of  inspiration  need 
not  affect  the  divine  content  of  the  Bible— 
that  God  speaks  in  many  ways.  In  every 
church  men  sit,  hearing  the  divine  message 


Biblical  Scholarship  and  the  Minister     39 

of  the  Book,  some  of  whom  still  hold  the  old 
theories,  some  of  whom  glory  in  the  new. 
Evolution,  it  is  now  seen,  has  not  taken  God 
from  us,  but  has,  if  anything,  increased  our 
wonder  of  Him,  by  showing  us  the  infinite 
and  colossal  scale  on  which  He  works. 
Through  all  these  changes  the  Church  has 
come  safely  ;  largely  because  of  the  able  lead- 
ership of  wise  and  scholarly  ministers  who 
have  neither  been  swept  off  their  feet  by  every 
new  wind  of  doctrine  nor  resisted  all  that  was 
new  because  it  was  new,  when  it  had  light  to 
throw  on  God  and  truth. 

The  battle  over  the  Old  Testament  has 
been  fought  and  settled.  Any  new  view  of 
its  authorship  or  of  its  inspiration  disturbs  us 
no  longer.  We  read  the  new  theory  and 
calmly  leave  it  to  the  scholars  to  debate  it, 
not  greatly  concerned  as  to  the  outcome. 
For,  after  all,  we  know  that  Christianity  does 
not  rest  on  any  one  attitude  towards  the  Old 
Testament — indeed,  does  not  rest  on  the  Old 
Testament  at  all  fundamentally,  but  upon 
Jesus  Christ  and  the  Christian  experience. 
So  it  is  not  a  matter  of  life  or  death  or  of 
faith  or  awful  doubt,  if  David  did  not  write 
every  Psalm,  or  if  the  prophecy  of  Jonah  be 
a  parable,  composed,  as  Jesus  composed  His 
parables,  to  point  a  great  religious  truth. 


40     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

But  when  one  comes  to  the  New  Testa* 
ment  it  is  a  very  different  thing.  When  one 
begins  to  attack  that  he  seems  to  attack  the 
very  pillars  on  which  faith  rests,  to  pierce 
the  very  heart  of  Christianity,  to  break  vio- 
lently into  the  home  of  the  soul.  Even  the 
least  tampering  with  it  creates  alarm.  To 
take  away  a  miracle  gives  pain  like  the  cut- 
ting off  of  a  finger  of  one's  hand.  Cast 
doubt  upon  one  story  in  it  and  you  cast 
doubt  upon  all  of  it.  Begin  to  emasculate  it 
and  where  will  we  stop  ?  The  miracles  are 
so  interwoven  with  the  gospel  story  that, 
take  them  out,  you  take  out  half  the  religious 
teaching  of  the  Gospel,  for  do  they  not,  most 
of  them,  stand  as  real  revelations  as  well  as 
supernatural  incident  ?  Yes,  it  is  an  entirely 
different  thing  when  one  begins  to  throw 
doubt  upon  the  absolute  veracity  of  the 
Gospels  or  to  question  even  the  most  super- 
natural event  of  the  Epistles.  The  Church 
will  tremble  when  that  comes.  Great  dark- 
ness is  in  store  for  many  people.  It  is  even 
now  beginning. 

The  New  Testament  is  going  to  be  sub- 
mitted to  just  the  same  searching,  impartial 
and  scientific  examination  by  the  great 
scholars  of  the  world  during  the  next 
fifty  years   that  the  Old  Testament  has  re- 


Biblical  Scholarship  and  the  Minister     41 

ceived  during  the  last  fifty  years.  This  is  as 
sure  as  anything  can  be.  The  signs  are 
everywhere.  Mrs.  Ward's  **  Robert  Els- 
mere  "  is  an  instance  of  the  far-reaching 
conclusions  that  are  being  put  forth  already, 
for  Mrs.  Ward  has  simply  novelized,  so  to 
speak,  the  results  of  much  German  scholar- 
ship. But  "  Robert  Elsmere  "  sweeps  all  the 
supernatural  from  the  New  Testament  till  no 
vestige  of  the  miraculous  is  left.  '*  Robert 
Elsmere  "  was  read  by  thousands  and  every 
pastor  knows  how  many  perplexed  souls 
came  to  him  after  reading  it.  The  ink  is 
hardly  dry  in  two  recent  books  by  two  of  our 
most  eminent  thinkers,  which,  while  not  deny- 
ing the  existence  of  the  miraculous  in  the 
New  Testament,  are  written  to  show  that 
neither  the  divinity  of  Christ,  nor  the  in- 
spirations of  His  teachings  rest  upon  the 
miraculous.  The  witness  of  experience  and 
the  transformations  wrought  in  humanity  are 
so  much  greater  evidence  that  miracles  are 
superfluous.  It  is  buttressing  the  greater  by 
the  less  to  bring  them  in.  The  two  books 
are  "Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion,'' 
by  Dr.  James  M.  Whiton,  and  **  Religion 
and  Miracle,"  by  Dr.  George  A.  Gordon. 
As  we  said,  neither  of  these  books  denies  the 
existence  of  miracles.     But  they  might  just 


42     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

as  well,  if  they  carry  their  main  point,  which 
is  the  needlessness  of  miracle  to  support  the 
divinity  of  Christ  and  His  teaching.  For 
miracles  are  so  hard  to  believe.  The  moment 
they  are  not  imperatively  needed  to  support 
Christ's  divinity,  they  will  be  dropped.  Now 
these  books  have  had  a  very  wide  reading 
and  have  perturbed  many  people,  as  every 
editor  and  pastor  knows.  But  they  are  only 
a  beginning.  They  are  coming  fast  from 
Germany.  In  England  the  "Virgin  Birth" 
is  questioned  every  week.  Prof.  Benjamin 
W.  Bacon's  books  on  "  New  Testament  Criti- 
cism "  are  as  radical  as  Professor  Driver's  or 
Canon  Cheyne's  *'  Introductions  to  the  Old 
Testament"  were.  All  the  foundations  are 
surely  going  to  be  shaken.  The  Church 
may  as  well  face  the  fact  at  once. 

What  will  be  the  outcome  of  this  critical 
study  of  the  New  Testament,  we  do  not 
know.  It  may  be  that  the  older  positions 
may  be  made  firmer  than  ever.  It  may  be 
that  the  miracles  may  remain  among  the 
things  that  cannot  be  shaken.  It  may  be 
that  there  will  be  some  change  of  attitude  as 
there  undoubtedly  has  been  towards  the  Old 
Testament.  But,  whatever  may  be  the  re- 
sult, many  in  the  Church  are  going  to  be 
sorely  perplexed  and  have  got  to  be  most 


Biblical  Scholarship  and  the  Minister     43 

wisely  led.  There  never  was  greater  7ieed  in 
the  ministry  than  there  will  be  for  the  first 
half  of  this  new  century  for  preachers  ofwide^ 
deep,  thoroiigh  scholarship.  There  must  be 
men  in  our  pulpits  who  shall  be  capable  of 
grasping  both  old  and  new  vigorously,  un- 
biasedly,  impartially,  and  who  through  all 
change  or  seeming  change  can  keep  the  faith, 
and  lead  their  perplexed  people  through  the 
shifdng  sands  to  the  firm  land — whether 
back  to  the  shore  from  whence  they  have 
drifted  or  to  new  lands,  does  not  matter 
here,  but  to  the  things  that  remain,  that  can- 
not be  shaken.  What  an  opportunity  this 
offers  to  the  young  man  who  not  only  wants 
to  be  a  great  scholar,  but  who  desires  also  to 
have  large  part  in  shaping  the  philosophy  of 
the  new  century  !  And  where  can  greater 
service  be  rendered  than  in  leading  the  pres- 
ent age  through  the  confused  views  of  New 
Testament  criticism  to  the  solid  rock,  as 
Munger  and  Smyth  led  the  last  generation 
through  the  Old  Testament  criticism  in  **  The 
Freedom  of  Faith"  and  "  Old  Faiths  in  New 
Light "  ? 


V 
THE  CHALLENGE  OF  THE  NEW  PAGANISM 

THE  great  question  of  the  age  is 
whether  the  Christian  philosophy  of 
life  or  the  Epicurean  is  to  prevail. 
Or,  in  other  words,  is  the  world  of  the  spirit  or 
the  world  of  the  senses  to  dominate  our  lives. 
The  Epicurean  philosophy  has  a  great  follow- 
ing in  our  land  to-day,  and,  especially  in 
some  of  our  great  cities,  it  is  attracting  so 
many  devotees  that  it  is  creeping  into  the 
churches  themselves.  The  name  is  not  used 
Half  the  people  who  hold  the  philosophy 
would  not  know  the  word  if  one  mentioned 
it.  But  all  their  thought  and  Hfe  is  ordered 
by  the  old  Epicurean,  pagan  teaching.  It  is 
simply  this  :  that  life  is  for  self-enjoyment,  not 
for  altruism,  service  or  sacrifice.  Any  man 
who  lives  simply  for  what  enjoyment  he  can 
get  out  of  life  is  an  Epicurean.  He  may  not 
have  vile  or  beastly  habits.  That  is  no  neces- 
sary part  of  the  philosophy.  These  things  may 
not  give  as  much  pleasure  to  some  men  as  a 
symphony.  Whatever  brings  the  most  joy 
44 


The  Challenge  of  the  New  Paganism    45 

in   life  is   the   golden   fleece   to   be  eagerly 
sought. 

One  cannot  live  long  in  any  city  without 
realizing  that  this  philosophy  of  life  has  great 
hold  upon  fully  half  the  people  of  the  city. 
They  begin  the  labour  of  the  day  with  no 
thought  of  its  being  a  divine  opportunity  to 
render  some  service.  It  is  only  a  hard  task 
whereby  one  wrests  all  the  money  one  can 
from  other  people  and  then  escapes  as  soon 
as  possible,  unless  the  money-making  itself 
becomes  a  greater  joy  than  what  it  can  pur- 
chase. When  evening  comes — or  if  there  is 
money  enough  to  live  without  work,  when 
the  day  comes — the  first  thought  is  not,  can 
we  render  any  service  this  evening,  or  make 
some  one  else  happy,  but  how  can  we  find 
most  satisfaction  for  ourselves.  This  satisfac- 
tion may  be  very  respectable ;  but  it  is  all  self- 
centred,  it  is  Epicureanism.  So  there  comes 
the  theatre,  the  opera,  the  concert,  the  dinner  at 
the  brilliant  restaurant,  the  card  party,  the  mo- 
tor ride,  the  yachting  trip,  for  the  respectable, 
and  the  gratification  of  appetites  and  evil  de- 
sires for  the  vicious.  Of  course,  these  respect- 
able pleasures  are  perfectly  legitimate  for  any 
one  at  times,  and  even  helpful.  But  when 
they  become  the  chief  and  only  concern,  as 
they  are  for  half  the  people,  they  are  pur« 


46     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

and  simple  paganism,  and  almost  a  worse 
enemy  of  Christianity  than  viciousness  itself. 
We  said  that  it  had  crept  into  the  churches. 
When  a  man,  although  he  attends  a  church, 
and  is  an  enrolled  member,  puts  more  thought 
and  time  on  the  gratification  of  his  own 
worldly  desires  than  he  gives  to  the  service 
of  man,  he  is  more  Epicurean  than  Christian. 
Christianity  is  to  live  towards  the  world  as 
nearly  as  possible  as  Christ  did.  When  a 
man  spends  most  of  his  money  on  a  beautiful 
home,  and  rnost  of  his  income  on  pleasures, 
and  most  of  his  enthusiasm  on  games  and 
sports,  and  devotes  7nost  of  his  time  to  those 
who  will  return  good  things  and  good  times 
to  him,  and  then  gives  only  Sunday  morning 
to  church,  and  only  the  fag  end  of  his  enthusi- 
asm, if  any  of  it,  to  service,  and  only  one  or 
two  little  gifts  of  money,  mere  trifles  com- 
pared with  what  he  spends  on  himself,  to 
Christ,  he  is  not  a  true  Christian  in  the  New 
Testament  sense  of  that  term.  He  may  be 
respectable  and  keep  the  Ten  Commandments. 
But  this  is  not  Christianity.  Christianity  is  the 
passionate  devotion  of  all  one  is  and  has  to 
Jesus  Christ.  The  Christian  lives  not  pri- 
marily for  himself,  but  for  the  kingdom.  One 
need  hardly  say  that  this  pagan  class  is  legion 
in  our  modern  life.     One  need  only  open  his 


The  Challenge  of  the  New  Paganism    47 

eyes  to  see  how  mad  the  nation  has  gone 
over  sports  and  games  and  rich  dinners  and 
theatres.  Enough  money  was  spent  on  din- 
ners in  gorgeous  restaurants  on  New  Year's 
Eve  in  New  York  to  have  supported  the  Pres- 
byterian Board  of  Foreign  Missions  half  of 
one  year.  There  are  members  of  rich 
churches  who  spend  five  hundred  dollars  on 
one  dinner  party  who  do  not  put  even  a  five 
dollar  bill  in  the  box  when  the  offering  for 
foreign  missions  is  received. 

But  not  only  is  there  this  great  wave  of  un- 
conscious Epicureanism  upon  us,  this  putting 
the  quest  of  pleasure,  comfort  and  enjoyment 
first,  but  there  is  an  increasing  and  powerful 
school  of  writers  who  are  preaching  this  doc- 
trine as  the  true  philosophy  of  life.  They  tell 
us  that  the  sacrificial  ideal  of  Christianity  is 
both  abnormal  and  impossible  of  attainment. 
They  question  the  fact  that  the  world  has  any 
claim  upon  us,  and  openly  advocate  the  life 
that  follows  the  so-called  natural  instincts, 
and  puts  rights  before  duties,  gratification 
before  service,  and  self  before  sacrifice.  One 
has  only  to  look  into  the  great  pile  of  modern 
novels  on  the  book-stall  to  find  this  gospel  of 
self  running  through  them  all.  Even  families 
may  be  ruined  that  the  soul  (oftenest  it  is  the 
body)  may  have  its  rights  and  find  the  rose 


48     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

of  joy.  Every  other  play  in  the  theatre 
gathers  about  this  point.  Our  modem  trage- 
dies are  based  on  the  insatiable  desire  for  the 
one  thing  upon  which  the  soul  has  set  its 
heart.  Our  modern  literature  knows  no  al- 
truism, and  how  rarely  one  finds  a  book  or 
play  in  which  real  sacrifice  is  preached  as 
both  the  fulfillment  of  life  and  ultimately  its 
chief  joy.  This  gospel  of  paganism  is 
preached  so  subtly  that  many  come  under 
its  sway  and  yield  to  it  before  they  are  aware 
of  its  utterly  unchristian  character. 

Along  with  all  this  there  is  another  phase 
of  the  same  thing— the  absorption  in  business 
of  every  other  man  in  our  great  cities,  and 
even  on  our  farms,  to  such  an  extent  that  the 
Church  is  being  more  and  more  crowded  out 
of  his  thought,  and  Christian  service  out  of 
his  practice,  and  the  life  of  the  spirit  out  of  his 
soul.  It  is  nothing  short  of  pitiful  to  watch 
this  process  going  on  in  our  great  citieSo  The 
writer  has  had  unusual  opportunities  to  meet 
men  in  the  large  cities  and  large  churches. 
His  observations  have  led  him  to  conclude 
that  in  some  instances  the  economic  system 
is  at  fault,  while  in  many  others  it  is  the  man 
himself.  There  are  thousands  of  men  who 
are  so  in  the  grasp  of  our  modern,  strenuous 
business,  where  the  competitive  order  holds 


The  Challenge  of  the  New  Paganism     49 

sway,  that  when  night  comes  they  are  too 
exhausted  to  either  think  or  read.  They 
turn  to  amusement  and  unnatural  excitement 
and  soon  lose  all  interest  in  the  life  of  the 
soul.  When  Saturday  comes,  they  seek  the 
country,  and  Sunday  becomes  a  day  of  sport 
and  outdoor  life  in  summer,  and  sleep  in 
winter.  It  was  only  last  spring  that  a  certain 
New  York  pastor  was  told,  while  he  was  sup- 
plying the  pulpit  in  one  of  the  great  suburbs 
on  a  beautiful  spring  Sunday,  that  a  quar- 
ter of  the  congregation  was  away  motor- 
ing! 

Then  there  is  the  other  group,  who  have 
become  so  engulfed  in  business  that  it  has  be- 
come a  passion,  and  the  worship  of  God  has 
been  supplanted  by  the  great  god,  "  Success." 
Often  this  passionate  pursuit  of  gain  has 
been  accelerated  by  the  desire,  or  seeming 
necessity,  of  maintaining  a  standard  of  living 
equal  to  that  of  their  richer  friends.  The  re- 
sult is  not  only  a  heart  out  of  which  has  been 
crowded  all  religious  life,  but  a  heart  so 
atrophied  by  absorption  in  things  and  by 
engrossment  in  wealth  that  it  has  lost  even 
the  power  to  respond  to  the  ideal  and  to  the 
spiritual  appeal.  The  very  words,  "  the  life  of 
the  soul,"  are  meaningless  to  it.  The  *'  world 
of  the  spirit "  is  as  foreign  to  its  comprehen- 


50     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

sion  as  is  the  planet  in  the  skies.  These  men 
read  no  more  the  great  books  of  life  and 
power.  Poetry  means  nothing  to  them. 
Idealism  has  no  charm  for  them.  The  old 
church  life  has  become  nothing  but  memory. 
They  take  no  interest  in  the  great  reform 
movements  of  the  day.  They  no  longer  have 
the  largeness  of  men  who  are  absorbed  in 
the  great  movements  in  which  God  is  moving 
over  the  earth.  What  spiritual  aspiration, 
as  well  as  reading,  exists  in  the  family  is  all 
in  the  v/ife's  name.  The  conversation  is  of 
business. 

Then  there  is  the  fact  that  half  the  nation 
seems  to  be  going  mad  over  sports.  There 
is  an  intoxication  over  games  as  marked 
as  the  intoxication  from  liquor.  A  business 
man  recently  remarked  that  half  his  clerks 
were  so  drunk  with  baseball  that  they  could 
do  no  satisfactory  work.  And  it  is  all  second- 
hand, abnormal  sport.  The  crowds  watch 
others  play  and  exercise.  They  play  only  by 
proxy.  They  watch  and  bet.  Great  crowds 
of  men  are  putting  infinitely  more  enthusi- 
asm into  sport  than  into  church  or  into  their 
home  or  civic  life.  The  women  are  closely 
following.  Even  the  colleges  seem  some- 
times to  be  more  interested  in  athletics 
than   in  scholarship.     If   one  questions  this 


The  Challenge  of  the  New  Paganism     51 

general  drunkenness  over  sport,  let  him  no- 
tice that  his  newspaper  gives  only  one  sub- 
ject in  all  creation  a  whole  page  daily — and 
often  two — namely,  sport.  It  is  for  sport 
that  the  extra  editions  are  published.  But 
sport  as  an  end  in  life,  a  complete  absorp- 
tion, is  Epicureanism  pure  and  simple.  If 
the  fever  goes  on  spreading  as  it  has,  it 
means  before  many  years  a  race  of  men  de- 
void of  all  moral  enthusiasms,  and  all  mental 
qualifications  for  wrestling  with  great  things. 
How  hard  it  is  even  now  to  find  great  men ! 
Sport  is  even  stealing  our  Sundays  and 
beginning  to  drag  young  men  from  churches 
to  the  ball  grounds. 

But  this  wide-spread  and  rapidly  growing 
Epicureanism  and  absorption  in  the  world  is 
the  great  menace  not  only  to  the  Church,  but 
to  our  manhood  and  to  the  nation. 

There  is  no  peril  ultimately  more  destruc- 
tive of  the  religious  life  than  worldliness, 
even  when  it  does  not  take  the  form  of  vice. 
The  Church  lives  on  the  passion  of  its  mem- 
bers, and  religion  thrives  only  in  the  ages  of 
idealism.  And,  worst  of  all,  immorality  soon 
comes  in  the  wake  of  spiritual  indifference. 
The  great  need  of  this  age  is  a  rebirth  of 
idealism.  Some  one  must  awaken  the  world 
to  the  fact  that  the  soul  is  made  for  the  world 


52     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

of  the  spirit,  not  for  self,  nor  pleasures,  nor 
bonds  and  stocks.  Some  one  must  show  it 
that  even  a  healthy,  happy,  outdoor  life,  if  ab- 
sorbed only  in  self,  forgetting  the  service  of 
the  world,  is  not  Christian,  but  only  the 
old  pagan  religion.  Here  is  the  opportunity 
and  challenge  of  the  gifted  college  man. 
(For  it  is  going  to  take  gifted  men  to  accom- 
plish these  things.)  The  college  man  is  an 
idealist  by  nature.  He  believes  that  life  is 
not  meant  for  bread  alone,  but  for  deep  senti- 
ment, lofty  aspiration,  and  the  service  of 
mankind.  He  has  been  living  with  the  great 
and  noble  souls  of  all  ages  and  has  caught 
their  enthusiasm  for  the  world  of  the  spirit. 
He  has  seen  that  nations  perish  when  men 
forget  the  soul.  He  has  found  that  man  is 
at  his  true  and  highest  point  only  when  he 
visits  the  Mountain  of  Transfiguration  with 
Jesus.  He  scorns  to  become  immersed  and 
enmeshed  in  the  paltry  things  of  the  world. 
The  Church  now  needs  such  men  above 
all  others.  She  needs  them  more  than  she 
needs  administrators,  or  orators.  She  needs 
men  who  can  week  by  week  make  the  world 
of  the  spirit  so  attractive  that  men  will  want 
to  leave  even  their  comfortable  homes  and 
motor  cars  to  have  some  part  in  it.  She  calls 
for  men  who  can  persuade  these  respectable^ 


The  Challenge  of  thfe  New  Paganism     53 

self-centred  (if  not  always  selfish)  men  that 
service  is  the  only  fulfillment  of  manhood 
and  in  the  end  brings  most  satisfying  joys. 
She  needs  so  very  much  just  now  great, 
gifted  men  who  can  convince  this  commercial 
age  that  money  and  success  won  at  the  sacri- 
fice of  the  soul  turn  eventually  into  dust  and 
ashes,  while  it  sears  the  owner  in  the  process. 
There  is  a  greater  call  for  young  men  than 
ever,  who  can  persuade  the  youth  of  our 
time  to  put  pleasure  simply  on  the  basis  of 
recreation  and  make  their  passion  and  pur- 
suit the  service  of  the  kingdom  of  Christ  in 
some  of  its  commanding  phases.  For  great 
movements  of  the  Spirit  are  abroad  in  the 
world ;  lofty  dreams  of  ancient  prophets  are 
coming  to  fulfillment.  Happy  the  young 
men  and  maidens  who  take  part  in  these 
sublime  fulfillments  of  God.  It  is  for  the 
minister  to  call  youth  and  manhood,  and 
even  age,  from  bondage  to  the  world,  up 
into  the  world  of  the  Spirit,  where  ideals 
hold  sway — not  things.  It  is  a  great  oppor- 
tunity. 


VI 

THE  COMBATING  OF  THE  NEW  ATHEISM 

ATHEISM  assumes  a  different  form  in 
every  century.  Haeckel  denies  the 
very  existence  of  a  God.  With  Vol- 
taire it  is  not  a  denial  of  the  existence  of 
God,  but  a  cynical  criticism  of  everything 
men  have  ever  said  about  Him.  With  Hume 
it  is  a  denial  of  revelation.  With  Spencer  it 
is  not  a  denial  of  a  Power  within  or  behind 
the  universe,  but  a  denial  of  our  capacity 
to  know  anything  about  it.  The  atheism  of 
our  own  day  is  different  from  any  of  these ; 
but,  if  anything,  it  is  more  deadly.  It  is  an 
out  and  out  materialism.  There  is  no  such 
thing  as  spirit.  The  universe  is  matter,  and 
had  its  origin  in  matter.  Nothing  is  trust- 
worthy which  cannot  be  substantiated  by  the 
senses — that  is,  the  five  senses.  What  we 
call  spiritual  sensations  are  merely  results  of 
stimulation  of  the  nerves.  Love  is  simply  a 
sudden  rearrangement  of  nerve  centres,  just 
as  is  seasickness.  Patriotism  is  an  intoxica- 
tion much  resembling  that  produced  by 
champagne.  Our  heroic  moments  are  times 
54 


The  Combating  of  the  -New  Atheism    55 

of  over-stimulation.  Gods  and  spiritual  be- 
ings are  simply  hallucinations  of  the  brains 
of  childlike  men.  Prayer — well,  it  is  still  a 
remnant  of  the  fear  that  we  have  brought 
from  savagery,  which  impels  us  to  call  on 
the  fancied  supernatural  beings.  The  uni- 
verse is  comprehended  in  oxygen  and  hydro- 
gen. The  highest  aspirations  of  man  are 
simply  emanations  of  the  brain,  as  vapours 
emanate  from  water  when  they  are  freed  by 
fire. 

All  this  being  true,  of  course,  the  whole 
ethical  and  moral  life  shifts  to  another  basis. 
In  a  theistic  and  spiritual  view  of  the  uni- 
verse, ethics  are  the  fruit  of  religion.  God 
is  a  loving  Father.  He  has  made  us  His 
children.  Let  us  therefore  love  Him  and  re- 
ceive His  love  in  return,  and  let  us  behave 
with  the  dignity  and  righteousness  becoming 
sons  of  God  and  heirs  of  immortality.  He 
has  revealed  Himself  and  His  will.  Let  us 
conform  our  lives  to  His  character  and  His 
commands.  He  has  shown  us  true  manhood 
by  sending  the  divine  man,  Jesus.  Let  us 
live  as  the  brothers  of  the  Lord ;  let  us  be 
friends  of  Christ.  But  now  all  this  is  gone. 
We  are  but  sticks  and  stones  endued  with 
remarkable  intelligence.  Back  of  the  universe 
is  neither  love  nor  light.     The  only  basis  for 


56     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

ethics  is  the  welfare  of  the  individual,  or  of  the 
whole  community,  if  the  race  can  rise  to  it. 
But  it  never  does  rise  to  it  if  it  forgets  God. 
Love  never  yet  grew  strong  when  its  source 
was  a  pool  of  water.  Under  this  materialis- 
tic theory  of  the  universe  it  loses  its  fine  aroma 
and  becomes  coarse  and  animal.  Those 
higher  aspirations  of  the  soul,  which  nothing 
can  awaken  but  a  good  and  worshipful  God, 
are  lost,  and  our  ideals  become  of  the  nature 
of  the  earth,  of  which  we  are  only  a  part 
All  our  ideals  are  lowered  to  the  level  of  be- 
ings who  look  downward  for  origin  and 
destiny  rather  than  upward.  Soon  our 
whole  social  life  becomes  coarse.  Soon  vice 
becomes  natural.  For,  if  we  are  only  ani- 
mals, we  will  ultimately  live  as  animals. 

Of  course,  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
immortality.  Mr.  Haeckel,  Mr.  Blatchford 
and  others  poke  fun  at  immortality.  Mr. 
Haeckel  even  doubts  if  some  men  would  like 
to  meet  their  mothers-in-law  again  after 
death.  Only  recently,  in  one  of  our  great 
universities,  an  eminent  German  scientist 
proclaimed  that  death  ended  all,  for  the 
brain  and  the  soul  were  only  one  and  the 
same.  Therefore,  when  the  brain  was  decom- 
posed, that  was  the  end  of  the  soul.  This 
denial  of  immortality  is,  of  course,  wrapped 


The  Combating  of  the  New  Atheism    57 

up  in  materialism.  But  let  us  not  forget  the 
issue  of  it  for  man.  When  man  discovers  he 
is  not  immortal  he  soon  hauls  his  ideals 
down  from  the  stars  and  hitches  them  to 
electric  lights.  The  great  inspiration  to 
divine  living  is  the  consciousness  of  divine 
origin,  nature,  and  destiny.  If  we  come 
trailing  clouds  of  glory,  we  live  by  glory.  If 
we  come  trailing  only  clouds  of  dust,  we  live 
by  dust. 

Now,  it  is  unfair  to  call  any  age  an  age  of 
doubt,  or  an  age  of  pessimism,  or  a  material- 
istic age.  This  is  not  a  wholly  materialistic 
age.  There  are  great  souls  in  it,  and  a 
million  men  are  cherishing  their  sonship  in 
God,  and  most  of  the  great  scientists  are 
holding  a  theistic  interpretation  of  the  uni- 
verse. Such  men  as  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  and 
Prof.  William  James  have  been  asserting  that 
all  is  spirit ;  that  even  matter  is  more  than  the 
matrix  of  spirit.  It  is  spirit  finding  realization. 
And  we  have  Henri  Bergson  in  France  and 
Professor  Eucken  in  Germany  preaching  a 
sublime  idealism  as  the  only  fit  and  large 
enough  thought  world  for  the  soul  of  man. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  this  materialism  has 
permeated  our  institutions  and  society  to  an 
alarming  degree.  Hardly  a  university  but 
has   materialists   upon    its  faculty,    men    to 


58     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

whom  chemistry  explains  everything— God, 
love,  and  the  human  soul.  Our  bookstores  are 
full  of  its  literature.  Haeckel's  **  The  Riddle 
of  the  Universe"  has  sold  by  the  hundreds 
of  thousands.  Socialism,  in  some  quarters, 
seeks  nothing  above  a  world  where  no  hunger 
is.  Success  in  business  becomes  almost  the 
acme  of  human  striving.  In  our  great  cities 
many  men  are  under  the  dominance  of  things. 
Great  buildings,  long  railroads,  huge  corpora- 
tions, bridges  hung  high  in  the  air,  vast 
engines — these  assume  highest  place  and 
shut  out  the  vision  of  the  skies.  Where  our 
fathers  sang  hymns  we  talk  bonds  and  stocks. 
Our  music  is  the  rumble  of  traffic.  No  great 
poet  sings.  Who  would  read  him  if  he  did  ? 
So  far  has  this  materialism  gone  that  a 
new  school  of  atheists  has  sprung  up,  who 
not  only  deny  Christ,  but  deny  His  teachings 
and  all  those  sanctions  of  morality  that  have 
grown  up  through  ages  of  Christian  experi- 
ence. The  books  of  Neitzsche,  which  cast 
superb  scorn  on  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount 
and  much  of  the  Christian  ethic,  have  had  a 
great  influence  in  Germany,  as  the  nation  is 
beginning  to  find  to  her  cost.  To  Neitzsche, 
the  gospel  of  altruism,  sacrifice,  and  forgive- 
ness is  abnormal,  unnatural,  and  sentimental. 
He  would  enthrone  power  as  Lord  of  life  and 


The  Combating  of  the  New  Atheism    59 

make  self  the  one  great  end.  In  France 
there  is  a  blatant  materialism  being  preached 
in  journal  and  book,  which  even  praises  that 
which  any  child  of  God  instinctively  abhors. 
It  has  reached  England  and  America,  and 
while  not  loudly  proclaimed,  finds  its  way  by 
a  subtle  infusion  into  the  minds  of  youth. 
It  is  not  uncommon  to  find  it  in  our  plays 
and  books.  Suderman's  "  Song  of  Songs  " 
was  sold  by  the  thousands  of  copies  in  the 
United  States.  There  is  a  disposition  among 
some  of  our  very  prominent  men  to  consider 
the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  visionary  and 
harmful.  It  will  not  hold  good  as  a  working 
theory  of  life. 

The  end  of  all  this  is  either  chaos  or  death. 
And  they  are  one  and  the  same  thing. 
Unless  there  can  be  infused  into  our  society 
a  new  faith  in  God,  and  immortality  as  the 
real  and  abiding  fact  of  the  universe,  the  out- 
look for  humanity  is  indeed  dismal.  The 
greatest  need  of  our  time  is  for  the  prophetic 
man  who  can  make  God  and  the  human  soul 
the  most  real  and  supreme  factor  in  hu- 
manity. It  matters  little — some,  of  course, 
— how  many  administrators  and  executive 
geniuses  we  have  in  our  pulpits.  The  chief 
thing  our  churches  need  is  great,  prophetic 
men  of  God — men  who  are  stewards  of  the 


6o     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

mysteries  of  God,  men  who  have  talked  with 
God  and  can  go  out  into  a  materialistic  age 
and  radiate  spiritual  qualities  in  the  very 
midst  of  the  world  of  things.  There  never 
was  such  an  opportunity  in  the  ministr}^  as 
there  is  to-day  for  the  man  who  believes  in 
the  reality  of  the  soul,  and  knows  the  capacity 
of  the  soul  for  God,  and  who  knows  that 
humanity  will  never  be  permanently  satisfied 
with  anything  less  than  the  everlasting  yea. 
The  tide  is  turning  that  way,  as  we  hinted. 
We  believe,  as  Rev.  Reginald  J.  Campbell 
recently  said,  that  the  world  is  even  now  be- 
ginning to  be  dissatisfied  with  things.  A 
hunger  for  the  things  of  the  spirit  is  coming 
upon  it.  Perhaps  the  great  revival  is  close  at 
hand.  We  believe  we  feel  the  first  faint  whis- 
perings of  the  mighty  wind  of  God.  Happy 
that  man  who,  with  prophetic  soul,  can  help 
lift  this  age  up  out  of  the  slough  of  materialism 
into  the  world  of  the  spirit,  where  love  and 
sacrifice  shall  again  become  the  law  of  life, 
and  where  men  shall  walk  again  with  God, 
and  where  honour  and  purity  shall  consume 
vice  and  lust,  where  the  home  shall  be  sacred, 
where  poets  again  shall  sing,  and  all  the 
earth  be  filled  with  the  knowledge  of  the 
Lord. 


VII 

THE  NEW  SOCIAL  GOSPEL 

FROM  the  beginning,  the  chief  concern 
of  the  Church  has  been  the  establish- 
ment of  right  relations  between  indi- 
vidual souls  and  God.  Its  history  has  been 
largely  the  history  of  personal  religion.  It 
began  with  the  making  of  converts,  one  by 
one,  from  paganism  and  from  the  Jewish 
Church.  After  Christianity  had  become  the 
state  religion  of  practically  all  of  Europe,  its 
chief  mission  became  the  nurture  of  its  chil- 
dren in  personal  religion  and  the  redemption 
of  men  from  the  evil  of  the  world.  Its  great- 
ness has  consisted  in  its  superb  ministry  to 
human  souls.  It  led  its  children  face  to  face 
with  God.  It  presented  Christ  to  the  alien- 
ated soul  as  the  hope  and  Saviour.  It  com- 
forted the  sorrowing,  the  despondent  and  the 
doubting  with  the  eternal  Word  of  God.  It 
inculcated  an  ethic  for  the  individual  that 
created  a  practically  new  type  of  man.  It 
has  made  saints  in  every  age.  It  has  called 
millions  to  follow  Jesus  Christ  in  the  sacrificial 
life.  It  has  taught  all  men  the  way  of  joy 
6i 


62     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

and  peace.  It  has  made  the  Gospel  of  im- 
mortality a  real  power  in  myriads  of  souls. 
When  the  spiritual  life  has  ebbed  low  it  has 
engendered  great  revivals  of  religion.  But 
they  have  always  been  revivals  of  personal 
religion.  It  has  led  little  children,  one  by 
one,  into  the  kingdom  of  God  and  inculcated 
in  them  the  power  to  live  by  faith,  which  is 
the  highest  achievement  of  the  human  soul. 
In  these  later  years  it  has  sent  out  mission- 
aries again,  as  it  did  in  its  first  years,  to  con- 
vert the  heathen.  This  missionary  work, 
until  quite  recently,  has  also  been  exclusively 
to  individuals. 

This  work  the  Church  has  done  superbly, 
and  by  it  she  has  veritably  changed  all  hu- 
man history.  By  this  work  with  individuals 
alone  she  has  transformed  the  face  of  the 
world,  created  a  new  civilization,  permeated 
society  with  a  new  spirit,  created  a  holy  at- 
mosphere amidst  the  foulness  of  the  earth. 
For  every  Christian  becomes  a  light  which 
lightens  the  world  wherein  he  moves.  Every 
Christian  is  a  leaven  which  leavens  the  lump. 
And  the  Church  must  ever  pursue  her  evan- 
gelistic work  with  holy  zeal.  For  personal 
religion  is  the  foundation  on  which  a  renewed 
society  must  ever  permanently  rest.  Our 
souls  cry  out  for  the  living  God,  and  the 


The  New  Social  Gospel  63 

Church  must  ever  make  Him  real  to  us.  The 
mysteries  of  this  life  gather  about  every  soul, 
and  he  must  be  led  into  the  light  of  day. 
Each  one  of  us  has  sinned,  and  the  Church 
must  ever  lead  us  to  the  fount  of  cleansing, 
and  proclaim  to  us — each  one  by  himself — 
the  forgiveness  of  our  sins.  It  is  a  lonely 
world  for  millions  of  souls,  and  the  Church 
must  ever  preach  to  individuals  the  Father- 
hood of  God.  Social  righteousness  can  never 
be  lasting  until  the  units  that  compose  society 
have  consciences  that  reflect  the  will  of  God, 
and  moral  natures  that  are  both  pure  and  pas- 
sionate. Yes,  the  Church  must  continue  to 
minister  to  the  personal  needs  of  every  soul, 
and  lead  men  as  persons  in  that  worship  and 
prayer  that  endues  us  with  divine  power. 

But  in  these  later  years  the  Church  has 
rapidly  been  realizing  that  another  task  calls 
her  with  equally  commanding  voice,  namely, 
to  redeem  the  evil  world  as  well  as  evil  men  ; 
to  redeem  the  city  as  well  as  its  citizens ;  to 
build  a  holy  temple  in  the  earth  for  holy  men 
to  live  in.  She  has  not  merely  to  keep  men 
pure  and  unspotted  in  a  loathsome  world,  but 
make  the  very  world  itself  pure  and  spotless, 
as  far  as  may  be.  She  is  to  redeem  society, 
its  laws  and  sentiment  and  customs  and  in- 
justices, as  well  as  lifting  men  out  of  its  evil 


64     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

clutches.  Hence  has  arisen  the  new  enthu- 
siasm for  humanity  equal  to  the  old  passion 
for  men.  Hence  has  come  the  social  gospel 
which  is  now  become  equally  the  Church's 
message  with  the  Gospel  for  human  souls. 
Of  course,  the  Church  has  never  entirely  neg- 
lected it.  She  attacked  the  gladiatorial  games 
in  ancient  Italy,  and  a  universal  evil  fell  be- 
fore her  anger.  She  attacked  human  torture 
in  the  days  of  Thomasius,  and  the  diabolical 
machines  rusted  away.  She  attacked  feudal- 
ism, and  before  her  new  gospel  of  liberty  the 
castles  crumbled  on  their  hills.  She  spread 
the  gospel  of  the  brotherhood  of  man,  and 
out  of  her  preaching  sprang  democracies  and 
at  least  the  beginning  of  that  struggle  for 
justice  and  equality  which  is  the  chief  feature 
of  our  modern  life.  She  protested  against 
slavery,  and  out  of  her  gospel  of  the  sonship 
of  all  men,  regardless  of  colour  or  capacity, 
came  the  emancipation  of  serfs  and  slaves. 
But  never  has  this  been  her  chief  mission  or 
a  mission  coequal  with  her  ministry  to  single 
souls,  until  our  own  day. 

To-day  the  social  mission  of  the  Church 
has  become  so  much  her  conviction  that  it' 
holds  equal  place  in  her  work  and  purpose 
with  her  evangeUstic  task.  (The  two  are 
never  contradictory,  but  are  complementary 


The  New  Social  Gospel  65 

each  to  the  other.)  The  signs  of  it  are  every- 
where about  us.  The  Men  and  Religion 
Forward  Movement,  for  instance,  has  made 
the  larger  portion  of  its  program  the  cleansing 
of  politics,  the  purification  of  business,  the 
securing  of  economic  justice,  the  abolishment 
of  the  saloon  and  the  abolishment  of  indus- 
trial servitude.  The  various  brotherhoods  of 
the  churches  have  set  social  reform  before 
them  as  their  chief  task.  The  Federal  Coun- 
cil of  the  Churches  of  Christ  has  created 
commissions  on  social  service  and  on  peace 
and  arbitration,  and  is  devoting  much  of  its 
energy  to  the  healing  of  the  breach  between 
capital  and  labour.  The  denominations  have 
themselves  created  many  similar  commis- 
sions. The  leading  religious  books  to-day 
deal  with  these  great  social  problems,  seek- 
ing ways  whereby  Christianity  may  be  ap- 
plied to  their  solution.  The  same  change 
has  come  over  the  pulpit  of  the  land.  All 
this  means  that  the  task  of  the  Church  is 
now  not  only  to  lift  men  out  of  evil  condi- 
tions but  to  transform  the  very  environment 
in  which  men  have  to  live. 

The  most  significant  thing  about  the  great 
National  Christian  Conservation  Congress  of 
the  Men  and  Religion  Forward  Movement, 
held   in  Carnegie  Hall  in  April,  191 2,  was 


66     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

the  continued  emphasis  on  the  new  social 
gospel,  the  insistence  that  the  Church  of  the 
twentieth  century  has  got  to  redeem  society 
as  well  as  individuals  in  it,  institutions  as 
well  as  their  members.  One  paragraph  from 
the  Report  of  the  Commission  on  Social 
Service  so  clearly  puts  the  new  obligation  of 
the  Church  that  I  quote  it  at  length : 

**  Jesus  came  to  create  a  new  earth  wherein 
righteousness  would  dwell.  His  aim  was 
health — whole  bodies  and  whole  minds  and 
whole  consciences  and  whole  souls.  He 
came  as  a  physician  specially  concerned  with 
the  sick :  *  I  came  not  to  call  the  righteous 
but  sinners.'  The  world  was  plagued  with 
the  disease  of  selfishness,  and  it  was  His 
task  to  bring  health  to  its  victims.  The 
story  of  His  life  is  full  of  accounts  of  His 
personal  contacts  with  sinful  individuals — . 
Zacchaeus,  the  woman  of  the  city  (a  sinner), 
Nicodemus,  the  rich  young  ruler,  the  Samar- 
itan woman,  and  many  more.  They  were 
the  sick  who  had  need  of  a  physician,  the 
lost  whom  He  came  to  restore  to  health  and 
to  their  normal  relations  and  functions  in 
God's  great  world-household. 

But  we  must  remember  that  Jesus  was 
also  the  transformer  of  social  conditions,  the 
Founder  of  a  divine  social  order.    The  phrase 


The  New  Social  Gospel  67 

oftenest  on  His  lips  was  the  kingdom  of 
God.  He  proclaimed  a  new  era  of  justice, 
kindness  and  faithfulness  in  which  men 
should  dwell  together  in  family  relations 
under  the  fatherly  control  of  a  God  like 
Himself  in  character,  a  social  order  in  which 
Zacchaeus  would  not  be  tempted  to  become 
extortionate,  nor  the  passionate  woman  se- 
duced to  harlotry,  nor  Nicodemus  made  self- 
complacently  cultured,  nor  the  wealthy  young 
man  mastered  by  his  possessions,  nor  the 
Samaritan  woman  ruined  by  the  home- 
wrecking  ideals  and  conditions  of  a  Sychar. 
Jesus  had  the  purpose  of  creating  a  new 
humanity  as  He  worked  along  both  lines  of 
service.  He  sought  to  change  society  by 
transforming  individuals  and  making  them 
salt  and  light  and  leaven  to  preserve  and 
illuminate  and  alter  the  community;  He 
strove  to  render  the  conversion  of  individ- 
uals unnecessary  by  establishing  a  new  social 
order  of  love  in  which  they  would  be  moulded 
from  birth  into  sons  and  daughters  of  the 
.Most  High.  The  process  of  individual  sal- 
vation works  from  inside  a  single  heart  out 
upon  a  world  that  is  to  be  redeemed  ;  the 
process  of  communal  salvation  regenerates 
social  conditions  in  order  to  shape  aright  the 
lives  of  individuals.     .     .     .     Along  with  the 


68     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

task  of  saving  lives,  the  Church  must  follow 
its  Lord  in  attempting  to  transform  social 
conditions  which  destroy  men's  lives.  It 
must  scrutinize  every  social  institution  and 
arrangement  in  the  light  of  its  Lord's  Spirit 
to  detect  sources  of  selfishness  which  undo 
its  work  and  produce  sinners.  It  cannot  be 
content  with  teaching  a  young  man  that, 
like  Jesus,  he  must  come  not  to  be  ministered 
unto,  but  to  minister,  and  then  send  him  out 
into  a  business  world  where  he  is  told  that 
every  man  is  for  himself  first,  last,  and  al- 
ways; or  into  a  civic  life  where  politicians 
appeal  to  his  self-interest  and  bid  him  vote 
from  a  platform  from  a  selfish  patriotism  that 
looks  to  the  enrichment  of  his  own  country 
irrespective  of  its  effect  on  some  other  nation. 
It  confronts  the  existing  social  order,  as  that 
is  expressed  in  government  or  in  industry  or 
in  the  treatment  of  the  criminal,  or  in  educa- 
tion or  in  any  other  phase,  with  its  Christlike 
social  order,  and  points  out  discrepancies  and 
contrasts." 

As  a  consequence  of  this  new  social  con- 
viction the  Church  is  addressing  itself  to  a 
hundred  great  problems  of  social  redemption 
which  were  almost  outside  of  its  province 
fifty  years  ago.  She  will  still  reclaim  the 
drunkard,  and  will  even  more  earnestly  train 


The  New  Social  Gospel  69 

her  children  to  self-control,  but  at  the  same 
time  she  will  make  an  uncompromising  fight 
against  the  saloon  until  temptation  to  drink 
is  removed  and  the  saloon's  whole  nefarious 
influence  is  quenched.  She  will  fight  for 
such  possible  living  conditions  for  all  people 
that  they  shall  not  be  urged  to  drink  by  half- 
nurtured  bodies,  diseased  and  anaemic  blood, 
nor  impelled  to  the  saloon  by  barren  and  dark 
tenements  in  which  no  cheerfulness  is  pos- 
sible. She  will  still  try  to  reclaim  the  woman 
of  the  street,  and  is  doing  remarkable  work 
for  these  women  in  some  cities,  although 
only  reaching  ten  out  of  ten  hundred,  but 
she  will  also  make  a  wise  and  thorough 
study  of  the  whole  problem  of  social  evil 
and  endeavour  by  legislation  and  creation  of 
popular  sentiment  to  somehow  abolish  pros- 
titution while  at  the  same  time  she  saves  its 
victims  one  by  one.  She  will  open  mis- 
sionary schools  in  congested  districts  and 
build  settlement  houses,  that  she  may  reach 
and  teach  the  little  working  children  of  the 
poor,  and  erect  hospitals  where  she  may  care 
for  them  as  by  the  thousands  they  become 
victims  of  child  labour  ;  but  at  the  same  time 
she  will  work  unceasingly  until  by  just  laws 
and  by  common  conviction  every  child  is 
guaranteed  its  right  to  sun  and  air,  educa- 


7©     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

tion  and  play,  and  health  enough  to  start 
life  on  a  sound  physical  foundation.  She 
will  continue  to  preach  personal  righteous- 
ness to  the  millionaires  in  the  pew,  and 
justice  and  mercy  to  the  mill  owners  and 
employers  of  labour,  and  she  will  carry  the 
Gospel  to  the  poor  and  oEev  them  cheer  and 
hope  in  their  poverty,  but  she  is  going  to  do 
much  more  than  this  in  the  next  fifty  years. 
She  is  going  to  make  a  thorough  and  com- 
plete study  of  the  whole  problem  of  capital 
and  labour,  the  relationship  of  employer  and 
employee,  and  is  ultimately  going  to  con- 
ceive an  economic  system  where,  by  co- 
operation, these  embittering  strikes  and  lock- 
outs will  become  things  forgotten,  and  where 
the  very  causes  of  poverty  will  so  be  abol- 
ished that  we  shall  no  longer  have  the  poor 
with  us  always,  and  all  men  shall  together 
praise  God  for  His  supplying,  through  these 
new  labours  of  the  Church,  their  daily  bread. 
She  is  going  to  build  hospitals  for  the  tender 
ministry  of  the  sick,  but  at  the  same  dme  she 
is  going  to  insist  upon  such  homes  for  the 
people  that  tuberculosis  is  not  the  certain 
consequence  of  their  occupancy. 

So  with  all  the  great  problems  that  stand 
between  us  and  the  kingdom  of  God,  she 
will  rescue   the  victims  of   all  injustices  as 


The  New  Social  Gospel  71 

long  as  the  evil  lasts,  struggling  to  the  end, 
but  her  twentieth  century  task  is  to  be  the 
creation  of  new  earths  after  the  pattern  of 
God's  new  heavens.  She  will  speak  with  a 
voice  that  all  the  nations  shall  heed  :  **  There 
can  be  but  one  standard  of  righteousness  in 
the  kingdom  of  God."  Every  group  of  men, 
every  company,  every  combination,  every 
city,  every  state,  every  nation,  must  bring 
all  its  actions  under  the  same  rule  of  honour, 
justice  and  altruism  that  now  prevails  among 
individuals  in  the  kingdom.  At  last  even 
nations  must  act  towards  each  other  as  two 
Christians  act  towards  each  other  under  the 
law  and  in  Christ's  Church.  Need  one  stop 
to  say  what  an  opportunity  all  this  opens  to 
the  young  man  who  wants  to  have  some 
part  in  the  transformation  of  the  world  ? 
Has  not  every  sentence  I  have  written  here 
been  a  call  to  such  leadership  as  the  Church 
has  never  offered  before,  and  better  than 
anything  else  the  world  ofTers  now  ?  For 
do  not  be  misled.  It  is  the  Church  that 
has  been  doing  these  things  and  who  always 
will  do  them.  There  are  societies  innumer- 
able for  the  accomplishment  of  each  reform. 
But  back  of  them  is  the  Church  vitalizing 
them,  supporting  them,  interesting  the  Chris- 
tian congregation  in  its  endeavours,  pointing 


72     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

the  way  to  action,  prophetically  conceiving 
the  ideal  for  which  all  are  striving,  forever 
the  architect  of  the  city  of  God.  Tliere 
never  was  such  need  of  wise  young  men  full 
of  a  passion  to  take  the  oppressor's  hand  ofi 
God's  little  children  and  set  the  innumer- 
able prisoners  of  greed  and  brute  powers 
free.  There  never  was  a  time  when  young 
men  of  prophetic  vision  and  capacity  for 
generalship  could  find  such  scope  for  their 
highest  enthusiasms  and  greatest  capacities 
than  the  ministry  offers  in  these  days  of  the 
new  social  gospel.  Already  there  is  a  splen- 
did communion  of  these  men — such  men  as 
Kingsley,  Maurice,  Guthrie,  Gladden,  Taylor, 
Rauchenbusch,  Mathews,  Whiton,  Steiner, 
Stelzle,  Campbell,  Strong — time  would  fail 
us  to  mention  the  hundreds  more.  But  what 
men  these  are !  How  they  have  led  the 
Church  out  into  a  new  vastness  of  en- 
deavour I  What  prophetic  idealism  under- 
lies all  their  conviction  !  What  great  days 
of  kingdom  building  have  they  introduced 
for  the  Church !  Who  would  not  rejoice  to 
belong  to  such  a  group  of  men  ? 


VIII 

MISSIONS  AND  THE  CALL  FOR  STATESMEN 

THE  missionary  activity  of  the  Church 
has  reached  vast  proportions  and 
passed  so  far  beyond  the  early 
stages  of  simply  preaching  the  Gospel  to  the 
Eastern  races  that  it  calls  for  leaders  equal  in 
capacity  to  those  who  preside  over  govern- 
ments. The  first  foreign  missionaries  went 
into  India,  China,  and  Japan  simply  as  Paul 
went  to  Corinth :  to  carry  the  message  of 
Jesus  Christ  as  the  Saviour  of  the  world. 
Their  efforts  were  largely  expended  in  mak- 
ing converts.  The  preaching  was  personal, 
and  much  of  it  was  done  in  face  to  face  con- 
versation with  single  souls.  Of  course,  other 
things  quickly  followed.  After  a  church  had 
been  gathered  together  a  school  was  founded. 
But  the  chief  aim  of  this  school  was  the  at- 
taching of  the  children,  one  by  one,  to  the 
Church,  and  the  leading  them  to  accept,  as 
individuals,  the  Christian  faith.  This  work 
was  successful,  beautiful,  and  is  a  lasting 
monument  to  the  apostolic  consecration  of 
the  early  missionaries.  But  their  very  suc- 
73 


74     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

cess  led  them  out  into  large  enterprises  which 
soon  passed  beyond  the  conversion  of  indi- 
viduals into  the  sphere  of  social,  and  even 
national,  ministration.  The  missionary  who 
came  out  to  convert  a  few  men  to  Christ 
found  himself  developing  a  hospital  system 
in  China,  or  heading  the  famine  relief  work 
of  India,  or  advising  governments  how  to 
found  colleges  and  school  systems  and  indus- 
trial institutes  and  thus  not  only  playing  the 
single  part  of  a  minister  of  the  Gospel,  but 
also  responding  to  demands  that  called  for 
statesmanship. 

To-day  all  this  has  grown  until  the  mis- 
sionary movement  has  become  the  very  im- 
partation  of  a  whole  civilization.  The  mis- 
sionary goes  to  India  not  only  to  preach  the 
Gospel  to  a  few  souls  but  to  transform  India 
itself  into  a  civilization  based  on  Christian 
principles  and  ethics.  Missions  have  become 
great  centres  of  light  and  learning,  even 
of  democracy  and  constitutional  reform. 
From  the  mission  centre,  with  its  church, 
schools  and  colleges,  goes  out  an  influence 
felt  by  the  millions  who  have  not  yet  pro- 
fessed themselves  Christians.  The  untabu- 
lated  results  of  missions  have  to  be  consid- 
ered in  our  time  as  well  as  those  capable  of 
being  reduced  to  statistics.     The  by-products 


Missions  and  the  Call  for  Statesmen     75 

are  as  great  as  the  direct  results.  More  and 
more  the  East  is  calling  to  the  West  for  the 
fruits  of  Christianity,  as  well  as  the  original 
Gospel.  In  its  eagerness  it  wants  Christian 
civilization  before  it  has  had  time  even  to  be- 
come Christian.  Missions  have  thus  become 
great  world  movements  of  one  civilization 
upon  another.  The  missionary  has  become 
the  mediator  of  the  West  to  the  East.  He  is 
more  and  more  becoming  the  interpreter  of 
the  best  and  most  fundamental  of  each  civili- 
zation to  the  other.  One  who  followed  the 
proceedings  of  the  great  Ecumenical  Coun- 
cil of  World  Missions  at  Edinburgh  must 
have  been  impressed  with  this  from  the  be- 
ginning to  the  end.  It  is  admirably  ex- 
pressed in  Dr.  Robert  E.  Speer's  best  vol- 
ume, **  Christianity  and  the  Nations "  (the 
Duff  Lectures  for  19 10).  Even  governments 
are  beginning  to  take  missionaries  into  their 
councils.  It  is  becoming  no  uncommon 
thing  for  emperors  and  rulers  to  consult  them 
on  affairs  of  state.  Foreign  nations  are  seek- 
ing their  aid  in  the  establishment  of  new  so- 
cial, political  and  economic  orders,  as  well  as 
the  new  educational  systems.  They  act  as 
the  right  hand  men  of  the  governors  of  prov- 
inces. President  Taft  has  borne  remarkable 
testimony   to   their  aid   in  his  work  in  the 


76     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

Philippines.  They  are  becoming  the  great 
peacemakers.  It  was  a  missionary,  Dr.  J. 
H.  DeForest,  of  Japan,  who  did  most  to  pro- 
mote friendly  relations  between  Japan  and 
the  United  States  when  evil-minded  men 
tried  to  arouse  enmity.  It  is  the  missionary 
who  more  and  more  represents  his  govern- 
ment in  the  East — more  than  does  even  the 
ambassador  who  often  knows  little  of  the 
people  to  whom  he  has  been  sent.  The  am- 
bassador's first  act  is  generally  to  send  for  the 
president  of  the  mission  college,  or  pastor  of 
the  mission  church.  Who  can  measure  the 
influence  of  such  Christian  colleges  as  those  at 
Constantinople  and  Beirut  ?  Not  a  few  im- 
partial men  have  said  that  much  of  the  new 
democratic  movement  and  the  new  idealism 
dawning  in  Turkey  has  had  its  origin  in  these 
schools.  The  new  republic  of  China  is  turn- 
ing to  the  Christian  colleges  for  the  young 
men  who  are  to  hold  commanding  office  in 
the  new  nation.  India  and  Japan  have  insti- 
tutions of  equal  influence  throughout  their 
provinces. 

But  what  has  been  is  as  nothing  compared 
to  what  is  to  be.  The  great  days  of  the  East 
are  before  it.  Such  transformations  are  going 
to  come  over  China  and  Japan  as  can  hardly 
yet  be  foretold  from  the  great  steps  taken. 


Missions  and  the  Call  for  Statesmen     77 

China,  for  instance,  has  400,000,000  souls. 
She  has  been  living  in  a  quiescent  dream  of 
mere  existence,  undisturbed  by  ideals,  am- 
bitions, or  the  interference  of  outside  nations. 
Her  wars  and  revolutions  have  been  confined 
to  one  or  two  spots,  great  parts  of  the  nation 
hardly  knowing  what  has  happened.  But  the 
spirit  of  the  Republic  has  spread  throughout 
the  whole  nation.  The  mighty  being  is  awake 
and  a  new  thrill  of  expectation  is  passing 
through  her  expansive  breast.  This  century 
will  see  her  take  her  place  among  the  nations, 
as  Japan  is  already  taking  hers.  What  will 
be  her  ideals  ?  Will  she  come  into  the  con- 
cert of  nations  filled  with  the  kindly  spirit  of 
world-unity  that  is  now  seeking  to  find  its 
way  among  the  governments,  or  is  she  to  come 
with  iron  fists  raised,  weighted  with  arma- 
ment and  armies,  and  enter  upon  that  period 
of  rapine  and  plunder  out  of  which  other  na- 
tions are  slowly  passing  ?  Is  she  going  to 
follow  chiefly  after  the  mammon  which  the 
older  nations  have  been  seeking,  or  is  she  to 
be  a  people  with  ideals,  a  belief  in  the  world 
of  the  spirit,  which  the  best  men  in  Western 
lands  are  urging  upon  their  nations  ?  Is  she 
going  to  be  a  nation  of  atheists  and  material- 
ists or  is  Christianity  to  have  free  scope  there 
to    infuse    its    life  and  health  into  all  her 


78    New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

thought  and  action  ?  The  answer  to  all  these 
questions  depends  upon  the  missionary  and 
the  Christian  teacher  more  than  upon  any 
one  else.  He  is  there,  right  on  the  spot 
He  ought  to  be  there,  and  will  be,  in  greater 
numbers  soon.  To  him  will  the  new  China 
turn  for  guidance  and  leadership  as  she  has 
already  turned.  The  great  century  of  mis- 
sions is  to  be  this  twentieth  century. 

All  this  calls  for  statesmen — statesmen  to 
go  and  statesmen  to  stay  at  home.  States- 
men to  go — that  is,  the  young  man  whom  the 
Eastern  nations  are  calling  to  come  out  to 
them  as  pastor  of  the  Christian  churches  and 
president  of  colleges  has  got  to  be  bishop  of 
vast  areas  of  awakening  life  and  thought, 
where  old  orders  are  changing,  giving  place 
to  new,  where,  out  of  the  slumbering  dust  of 
time  strong  men  are  rising,  with  eyes  intent 
on  new  worlds,  and  with  a  fine  idealism  being 
born  within  once  dormant  hearts.  Much  of 
the  direction  of  the  new  order  will  fall  upon 
him.  He  will  have  not  only  to  preach  to 
congregations,  but  be  also  a  whole  theolog- 
ical seminary  in  himself,  to  train  native  pas- 
tors and  teachers  in  his  own  expanding  field. 
He  will  have  opportunity — yes,  the  necessity 
will  be  upon  him, — of  wiping  out  abuses  and 
superstitions  and  transforming  the  whole  com- 


Missions  and  the  Call  for  Statesmen     79 

munity  into  a  part  of  the  kingdom  of  God. 
Indeed,  the  call  of  missions  to-day  is  for 
great  statesmen.  No  task  offers  sublimer  op- 
portunity to  the  young  man  who  wants  to 
undertake  some  new,  original  and  pioneer 
work.  He  will  be  given  a  territory  as  large 
as  one  of  our  states,  and  be  told  to  transform 
it  morally,  socially,  economically,  even  polit- 
ically, if  it  is,  as  in  all  probability  it  is,  corrupt 
from  ruler  to  lowest  subject. 

Equally  the  missionary  endeavour  calls  for 
statesmanship  in  the  clergy  at  home.  The 
new  missionary  movement  cannot  be  run  by 
narrow  men.  There  must  be  men  of  the 
statesmanship  capacity  at  the  head  of  our 
churches.  We  do  not  mean  merely  in  the 
secretaries'  offices.  We  mean  in  the  pul- 
pits. We  need  ministers  who  can  present 
missions  to  the  Church  in  such  prophetic, 
commanding  outlook  that  all  men  will  see  in 
them  the  opportunity  and  task  of  the  twen- 
tieth century.  We  want  men  who  are  large 
enough  to  see,  and  make  others  surely  see, 
that  Christianity  is  absolute  or  nothing  ;  that 
it  must  be  the  religion  of  all  men  or  of  no 
men  ;  that  its  ethics  are  universal  or  else  false, 
for  no  ethics  will  endure  which  are  not  for  all 
men.  There  is  no  hope  for  any  ethnic,  tribal, 
departmental,  Western  or  Eastern,  Northern 


8o     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

or  Southern  religion.  Real  religion  can  only 
be  one.  Christianity,  if  it  is  for  us,  is  for 
all  people.  Therefore,  we  must  give  it  to  all 
people.  And  the  Church  wants  young  men 
to  come  who,  seeing  this,  can  insist  that  the 
missionaries  take  to  the  nations  the  great  uni- 
versal, eternal,  absolute  truths  of  our  religion, 
and  not  those  thought  products  or  those  ex- 
periential fruits  of  it,  which  are  peculiarly 
Western.  Let  us  send  the  Gospels,  and  from 
them  let  the  East  frame  its  own  theology. 
Let  us  lead  the  nations  to  Christ,  and 
then  leave  them  to  define  His  person  as  Peter 
and  Paul  defined  it,  without  any  help,  after 
they  had  known  Jesus.  Let  us  show  them 
the  Father,  and  leave  them  to  write  their  own 
prayer-book.  There  are  wonderful  opportu- 
nities for  ministers  in  the  missionary  emprise 
of  the  twentieth  century. 


IX 

THE  CHALLENGE  OF  THE  NEW  AMERICA 

THE  minister  of  fifty  years  ago  faced 
an  entirely  different  situation  from 
that  which  confronts  the  minister  of 
to-day.  He  was  pastor  in  a  town  largely 
composed  of  families  native  for  several  gen- 
erations to  America,  and,  except  in  a  few 
factory  towns  and  cities  where  the  Irish  had 
appeared,  Protestant  and  with  Protestant  as- 
sociations. His  problems  were  great,  but 
they  were  simple.  He  had  a  task  demand- 
ing great  ability,  but  it  was  not  a  complex 
one.  Indeed,  hardly  any  task  could  be  more 
exactly  defined  than  his.  It  was  to  instruct 
the  congregation  from  the  pulpit,  to  teach 
the  children  the  Bible,  to  be  the  friend  of  all 
the  families  of  the  parish,  to  convert  the  sin- 
ners, and  to  improve  the  moral  welfare  of 
the  town.  Everybody  knew  him  and  he 
knew  everybody.  What  made  his  task 
simplest  of  all  was  that  everybody  in  the 
parish  had  grown  up  under  the  same  tradi- 
tions and  in  the  same  circumstances  as 
8i 


82     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

himself.     Consequently  he  understood  them 
through  and  through. 

But  it  is  only  in  parts  of  England  and 
Scotland  that  such  a  pastorate  is  open  to  the 
modern  minister.  He  enters,  no  matter 
where  he  may  go  in  our  land,  into  a  parish 
that  is  as  complex  in  its  make-up  as  an  in- 
ternational congress  of  races,  and  presenting 
problems  which  have  never  before  confronted 
either  the  church  or  the  pastor.  It  is  not 
only  that  the  Irish  Roman  Catholic  is  there. 
He  at  least  spoke  English,  and  had  grown 
up  under  a  semblance  of  free  government. 
But  it  is  that  there  is  an  Italian  settlement 
right  behind  the  church,  with  several  hun- 
dred Italians,  Roman  Catholic  and  free 
thinking  together,  speaking  no  English  and 
understanding  none,  and  knowing  nothing 
of  Republican  government  or  Democratic 
ideals,  full  of  superstitions  and  with  a  very 
childlike  apprehension  of  religion.  Adjoin- 
ing it  are  other  races  of  other  tongues — 
Hungarians,  Bohemians,  Slavs  of  all  varie- 
ties, Russians,  Greeks,  French  Canadians, 
every  nation  and  every  tongue.  And  then, 
as  if  to  make  the  problem  seemingly  inex- 
plicable, in  our  cities  are  three  million  Jews. 
And  most  of  these  Jews  do  not  know  the 
commonplace    vocabulary    of    Christianity; 


The  Challenge  of  the  New  America    83 

Paul  is  as  foreign  a  name  to  them  as  is  Men- 
cius  to  a  Christian.  Sometimes  a  few  of 
this  great  number  go  to  their  own  church  or 
temple.  Most  of  them  do  not,  and  this 
great  foreign  element  is  very  largely  a  free 
thinking  and  unreligious  multitude,  if  not  ir- 
religious. There  are  two  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  Italians  in  New  York  and  very  few 
of  them  ever  go  to  church.  The  Jews  are 
not  attending  the  temple  in  any  greater  num- 
bers than  are  the  Italians  the  church. 

This  is  the  parish  that  is  calling  to  young 
college  men  to  come  over  and  help  it.  It 
is  perhaps  the  hardest  task  to  which  the 
minister  or  any  one  else  has  ever  been 
called.  Sometimes  we  feel  that  it  offers 
more  problems  than  the  foreign  field.  But 
on  its  solution  depends  the  future  of  Amer- 
ica. Its  imperativeness  as  well  as  its  op- 
portunity for  genius  ought  to  be  weighed 
by  our  young  men  more  than  its  complexity 
and  seeming  impossibility.  It  is  the  great 
challenge  of  the  day  in  America.  It  is  to  be 
the  testing  point  of  the  Church.  Indeed, 
in  some  of  our  cities,  the  test  is  now  so 
severely  upon  the  churches  that  many  believe 
that  the  great  trial  of  Christianity  is  here. 
Can  Christianity  conquer  this  new  America, 
as  it  did  the  old  ?     Can  the  Christian  Church 


84     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

transform  this  seething  pot  of  Jews  and 
Slavs  and  Latins  into  Christians,  convert 
the  Jew  and  redeem  the  former  Christian? 
Sometimes  the  issue  looks  doubtful.  In 
many  instances  the  Church  runs  away  to  the 
old  conditions — to  a  homogeneous  suburb  of 
people  of  Puritan  or  Dutch  or  British  ances- 
try. If  she  stays,  she  often  ministers  to  her 
native  congregation,  which  gathers  twice  a 
week  within  her  walls  and  neglects  the  great 
foreign  population  behind  her  back  walls. 
But  if  the  Church  cannot  accomplish  this 
stupendous  redemptive  task  her  day  is 
doomed.  For  Christianity  is  accepted  as  the 
ultimate  and  universal  religion  because  of  its 
claims  to  transform  all  civilizations  and  re- 
solve all  situations  into  the  kingdom  of  God. 
If  it  fail  here  it  will  fail  everywhere.  But, — 
and  we  say  this  after  careful  thought,  and 
echoing  the  feelings  of  other  students  of 
modern  problems,— unless  a  great,  devoted, 
consecrated,  noble,  brave,  capable  and  re- 
sourceful band  of  young  men,  ready  to  live 
even  the  sacrificial  life,  shall  grapple  with 
this  new  church  problem  in  the  new  America, 
the  failure  of  the  Church  will  soon  be  upon 
us 

But  what  a  challenge  it  is  !     How  it  calls 
to  the  big,  brave  soul,  the  soul  that  wants  to 


The  Challenge  of  the  New  America    85 

move  in  large  scope  and  grow  by  varied  ex- 
perience into  spiritual  and  mental  gianthood. 
See  what  the  problem  is  :  The  young  minis- 
ter enters  his  parish.  First  of  all,  he  has  sev- 
eral months'  sociological  and  psychological 
work  before  him,  to  merely  understand. 
He  must  learn  all  the  antecedents  of  these 
foreigners — their  customs,  home  life,  tastes, 
temperaments,  points  of  view,  philosophy  of 
life,  previous  religious  experience,  present  at- 
titude towards  religion.  He  must  somehow 
come  to  be  their  friend,  and  get  into  their 
home  without  their  mistrusting  him.  He  can 
talk  with  and  through  the  children,  for  they 
soon  learn  English,  but  in  some  parishes  the 
pastor  might  well  learn  Italian  or  German  or 
French. 

After  he  has  come  to  know  them  and  has 
won  their  confidence,  he  has  a  threefold  task 
before  him.  He  must  teach  the  children  the 
Christian  religion.  It  will  not  be  difBcult  to 
get  the  children  to  the  church.  There  will 
be  some  difficulty  in  persuading  the  average 
church  to  admit  Italian,  Hungarian,  Polish, 
and  Slovack  children  into  the  Sunday-school 
rooms,  so  strong  is  class  spirit  even  in 
churches ;  but  this  is  a  part  of  his  statesman- 
like task.  These  children  can  be  very  val- 
uable to  the  minister  who  is  big  enough  to 


86     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

undertake  these  tasks.  They  can  all  sing 
like  song-birds.  Ten  Italian  children  will 
sing  with  more  effect  than  thirty  Americans 
— and  they  need  little  rehearsing.  Then 
there  is  the  second  problem  of  making  good 
American  citizens  out  of  all  these  young  men 
and  old.  Here  is  a  splendid  opportunity  for 
the  minister  to  get  into  his  first  contact  with 
these  immigrants  by  offering  them  lecture 
courses  on  American  history,  American  polit- 
ical organization ;  above  all,  on  American 
ideals.  Lectures  following  the  general  out- 
line of  President  Nicholas  Murray  Butler's 
lectures  before  the  Scandinavians  on  "The 
American  As  He  Is,"  would  be  of  infinite 
value  to  every  immigrant  who  comes  to  stay. 
But  this  young  minister's  great  task  still  re- 
mains undone.  He  is  to  win  the  allegiance 
of  these  men  to  Jesus  Christ.  This  will  tax 
his  powers  to  the  utmost.  These  men  will 
not  come  to  church,  so  he  must  carry  the 
Gospel  to  them.  Many  of  them  have  been 
reared  in  a  conception  of  religion  quite  dis- 
tinct from  the  evangelical  faith.  Many  of 
them  have  deep-rooted  prejudices  against 
the  Church.  Many  of  them  have  become  ad- 
dicted to  habits  not  consonant  either  with 
Christian  ethics  or  the  American  standard  of 
morals.     When  he  comes  to  meet  the  Jews 


The  Challenge  of  the  New  America    87 

he  finds  he  has  got  to  begin  away  back  where 
Paul  began.  They  have  no  Christian  as- 
sociations or  antecedents  on  which  to  build. 
Perhaps  he  has  got  to  adapt  the  Gospel  to 
their  conditions  and  preach  it  in  a  quite  dif- 
ferent form  from  that  in  which  he  preaches 
it  to  those  who  have  been  reared  in  Roman 
Catholicism.  But  all  this  great,  heterogene- 
ous crowd  has  got  to  be  shepherded  and  led 
to  Jesus  Christ,  else  what  is  to  become  of  the 
nation?  These  things  alone  are  enough  to 
engage  the  powers  of  the  finest  youth  of  the 
nation. 

But  the  work  is  not  yet  done.  The  task 
of  this  nation  is  to  weld  all  this  heterogeneous 
mass  into  a  perfect  unity.  She  has  to  take 
Germans,  Scandinavians,  Latins,  Slavs,  twenty 
nations  and  races,  of  every  lari-guage,  every 
temper,  every  colour,  every  philosophy,  from 
every  kind  of  government,  and  make  out  of 
them  one  nation — the  perfect  America,  homo- 
geneous, unified,  with  one  ideal,  one  destiny. 
In  the  accomplishment  of  this  the  nation 
must  show  the  world  how  all  sorts  and  con- 
ditions of  men,  from  every  nation,  can  dwell 
together  in  peace.  She  has  as  great  a  lesson 
to  teach  the  world  as  had  Palestine  or  Rome. 
If  Palestine  taught  the  world  of  a  righteous 
God  demanding  righteousness  in  His  chil- 


88     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

dren,  and  if  Rome  taught  the  world  political 
organization,  so  America  is  ordained  of  God 
to  teach  the  world  the  brotherhood  of  man. 
But  unity  and  brotherhood  rest  on  religion, 
are  its  direct  and  natural  product,  can  be 
born  no  other  way.  It  is  the  Church,  after 
all,  that  has  got  to  do  this  for  the  nation. 
The  school  and  college  may  help,  but  they 
cannot  do  it.  Brotherhood  and  spiritual 
identity  rest  not  on  geography,  but  on  the 
Bible.  Here  is  the  call  to  our  young  men 
seeking  some  great  and  commanding  voca- 
tion. The  ministry  never  had  such  oppor- 
tunity in  any  previous  day  for  both  service 
and  distinction  as  these  tasks  offer. 

In  closing  this  chapter  I  should  like  to  re- 
mark that  so  true  is  all  this  I  have  been  say- 
ing that  our  theological  seminaries  have  been 
revolutionizing  their  curriculi  to  meet  the  new 
conditions.  Sociological  problems,  especially 
those  of  capital  and  labour,  and  those  of  im- 
migration, are  assuming  prominent  places. 
In  some  schools  the  problem  of  ministering 
to  the  foreigners  is  given  especial  attention, 
with  special  faculties  and  courses.  Prof. 
Edward  A.  Steiner  urges  the  sending  of  those 
who  are  to  minister  to  the  foreigner  for 
sojourns  in  the  land  from  whence  they  came. 
He  himself  took  five  young  men  who  were  to 


The  Challenge  of  the  New  America    89 

serve  the  Slavs  in  the  coal  mining  regions  for 
a  half  year's  residence  in  Slavic  lands.  We 
believe  that  more  and  more  the  young  clergy- 
man will  want  to  learn  some  of  these  foreign 
tongues  that  he  may  speak  directly  to  these 
people.  The  problem  is  so  difficult  that  it 
needs  broad-minded,  determined  men.  It  is 
almost  an  indictment  of  our  present  whole 
training  for  the  ministry  that  it  is  practically 
impossible  to  find  men  capable  of  adapting 
the  Church  to  the  foreigner.  We  need  a  class 
of  ministers  of  great  ability,  trained  especially 
for  this  vast  undertaking. 


THE  RESTORATION  OF  A  UNITED 
CHURCH 

THE  remarkable  movement  towards 
church  union  which  is  manifesting 
itself  in  our  time  has  its  origin  in 
four  new  convictions — the  first,  that  the  things 
on  which  we  are  divided  are  the  lesser  doc- 
trines, while  the  things  we  hold  in  common 
are  the  essentials  of  the  faith  ;  the  second, 
that  denominationalism  contradicts  the  prayer 
of  the  great  Head  of  the  Church,  that  we 
might  all  be  one ;  the  third,  the  conviction 
that  Christianity  cannot  conquer  the  pagan- 
ism of  Christian  lands  and  the  heathenism 
of  foreign  lands  unless  it  can  attack  it  with 
united  and  harmonious  forces ;  and  the 
fourth,  the  conviction  that  denominational- 
ism is  sinful  in  its  waste  of  energy,  resource, 
and  money. 

The  causes  of  much  of  the  denominational- 
ism of  the  world  have  been  such  questions  as 
modes  and  times  of  baptism,  who  was  eligible 
to  the  Lord's  supper  and  who  was  not, 
whether  the  Lord's  supper  is  a  sacrament  or 
90 


The  Restoration  of  a  United  Church    91 

a  memorial,  whether  the  grace  of  God  was 
meant  for  all  or  for  a  few  elected  ones, 
whether  the  Church  should  be  democratic 
or  imperial,  have  bishops  anointed  from 
above — that  is,  by  the  hierarchy — or  have 
bishops  anointed  and  ordained  from  below — 
that  is,  by  the  people, — which  is  the  difference 
between  the  Episcopal  Church  and  the  inde- 
pendent churches.  Of  course,  there  have 
been  greater  and  more  fundamental  ques- 
tions than  these  at  issue  in  some  schisms 
of  the  Church,  as  in  the  creation  of  the 
Protestant  Church,  where  the  issue  was  be- 
tween a  selected  priesthood  or  a  priesthood 
of  the  whole  body  of  believers.  But  even 
here  one  cannot  say  in  our  day  that  the 
doctrine  of  the  priesthood  assumes  the 
same  importance  as  the  doctrine  of  God. 
Gradually  there  has  been  a  growing  and 
universal  emphasis  in  all  denominations  on 
other  doctrines  than  these.  It  is  equally  ap- 
parent in  all  denominations.  It  is  the  em- 
phasis on  the  fatherhood  of  God  ;  the  son- 
ship  of  all  men  in  God ;  the  end  and  aim 
of  religion ;  the  acceptance  of  Jesus  Christ 
as  the  Lord  and  Master  of  one's  life ;  the 
consequent  brotherhood  of  man ;  the  assur- 
ance of  forgiveness  through  Jesus  Christ ; 
the  love  and  service  of  humanity  as  the  test 


92     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

of  discipleship  ;  the  establishment  of  Christ's 
kingdom  on  the  earth  as  the  supreme  task 
of  the  Church.  These  are  the  things  all 
churches  are  preaching  to-day.  But  these 
are  the  things  all  churches  hold  in  common. 
No  denomination  has  ever  been  created  on 
any  of  these  great  fundamental  doctrines. 
More  and  more  the  churches  are  feeling  that 
these  are  the  things  that  make  a  Christian. 
The  result  has  been  that  all  denominations, 
preaching  more  and  more  the  same  truths 
and  Gospel,  have  become  more  and  more 
alike,  and  also  these  other  divisive  things 
have  assumed  less  and  less  importance  in 
their  eyes.  It  would  be  difficult  to  tell  from 
the  preaching  whether  one  was  in  a  Baptist, 
Presbyterian,  Methodist,  or  Congregational 
church  on  any  Sunday  morning  in  New 
York. 

The  movement  of  the  whole  Protestant 
Christian  Church  during  the  last  fifty  years 
has  been  from  the  emphasis  of  the  creeds 
and  many  doctrines  which  the  creeds  em- 
body towards  the  personal  attachment  to 
Jesus  Christ  and  the  following  of  Him  in 
the  sacrificial  life.  There  has  also  been  a 
growing  apprehension  of  His  supreme  pur- 
pose as  the  founding  of  a  society  upon  the 
earth  which  should  live  in  unity  as  His  fol- 


The  Restoration  of  a  United  Church    93 

lowers  and  have  as  its  law  His  one  principle 
of  love.  The  result  has  been  that  among  all 
denominations  the  feeling  has  been  growing 
that  our  divided  and  often  contentious  con- 
dition is  a  betrayal  of  His  purpose,  and  a 
pain  in  His  heart  forever.  The  following  of 
Him  should  be  higher  than  any  other  test. 
Those  who  follow  Him  should  be  one. 

While  the  force  of  Christianity  has  been 
separating  itself  into  forces^  the  forces  of 
evil  have  been  uniting  into  a  combined 
force.  The  very  success  of  Christianity, 
even  with  a  divided  Church,  has  driven  the 
evil  forces  of  the  world  to  combine  and  unite 
for  the  supremacy  of  the  world.  However 
this  may  be,  before  Christendom  lies  the 
great  Eastern  world.  Its  transformation  for 
Christ  is  a  gigantic  task  for  all  Christians 
combined.  In  recent  years  Eastern  relig- 
ions have  awakened  and  become  aggressive. 
Particularly  is  this  true  of  the  most  virile  of 
them  all,  Mohammedanism.  All  mission- 
aries are  agreed,  as  were  all  the  delegates 
at  the  great  Edinburgh  World  Missionary 
Conference,  that  the  task  is  hopeless  and  the 
exertion  futile  with  a  divided  Church. 

Nowhere  has  the  imperative  necessity  of 
union  at  home,  if  we  are  to  Christianize 
these  abroad,  been  better  stated  than  in  Rob- 


94     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

ert  E.  Speer's  statesmanlike  book,  **  Chris- 
tianity and  the  Nations."  He  says:  "The 
objects  which  the  missionary  enterprise  seeks 
include  and  require  the  unity  of  the  Christian 
Church.  Let  us  consider  first  some  of  the 
conditions  which  indicate  that  such  Christian 
unity  on  the  foreign  mission  field  is  desirable 
and  necessary.  In  the  first  place,  the  mag- 
nitude, the  difficulties,  and  the  urgency  of 
the  task  which  is  before  us  demand  the  most 
fruitful  and  effective  use  of  all  our  resources. 
We  have  to  secure  the  evangelization  of  a 
thousand  million  of  our  fellow  creatures ; 
that  is,  to  carry  spiritual  truth,  the  most  diffi- 
cult of  all  truth  to  carry  truly,  to  two-thirds 
of  the  human  race,  and  to  seek  to  persuade 
men,  not  only  to  embrace  this  truth,  but  to 
place  their  characters  under  the  transforming 
influence  of  the  Lord  of  it.  The  task  con- 
templates changing  the  opinions  of  men,  not 
upon  impersonal  questions  or  matters  of  ma- 
terial self-interest,  but  upon  religion,  of  which 
men  are  ever  most  reluctant  to  think  exactly, 
or  indeed,  really  to  think  at  all ;  and  not  the 
opinions  of  the  open-minded  only,  but  those 
even  of  the  ignorant  and  prejudiced  with 
whom  religious  traditions  are,  if  possible, 
even  more  inveterate  than  with  the  enlight- 
ened.    And  the  work  involves  not  only  the 


The  Restoration  of  a  United  Church    95 

change  of  men's  opinions,  but  also  the  revo- 
lution of  their  character,  new  principles  of 
action  displacing  old  and  producing  a  new 
fruitage  of  deeds.  And  further,  it  is  not  to 
suffice  to  try  to  do  this  in  individuals  only. 
That  is  fundamental,  but  through  that  and 
beyond  that,  it  is  proposed  to  introduce  the 
new  principles  into  society  and  to  drive  out 
as  far  as  may  be  all  that  is  alien  to  the  king- 
dom of  God  and  that  will  not  be  naturalized 
in  it.  And  this  work  is  to  be  done,  not  in 
any  one  land,  nor  in  any  one  language,  nor 
in  any  one  set  of  conditions.  It  must  be 
done  in  all  of  the  non-Christian  lands,  among 
all  types  of  races,  from  the  savage  up  to 
the  peoples  proud  of  civilizations  long  ante- 
dating ours,  and  made  less  accessible  by  their 
hate  and  contempt  for  us,  and  by  the  mate- 
rialism of  the  commercial  civilization  with 
which  we  have  approached  them.  It  must 
be  done  in  many  scores  of  languages,  which 
have  not  only  to  be  mastered,  but  in  many 
cases  to  be  expanded  in  order  to  express  the 
truth  which  is  to  be  conveyed.     . 

*'  The  task  is  too  difficult  and  too  urgent 
for  any  one  section  of  Christians  to  hope 
to  accomplish  it  alone.  As  the  late  Bishop 
of  London  wrote  to  Mr.  W.  H.  T.  Gaird- 
ner,   when    he    enquired  of    him  in  1898  as 


96     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

to  the  propriety  of  participation  by  the  An- 
glican students  in  the  work  of  the  World's 
Student  Movement :  *  No  one  religious  body 
can  undertake  all  the  work  that  is  to  be 
done.'  Where  no  body  of  Christians  can  do 
the  work  alone,  its  aloofness  from  the  rest 
with  which  it  might  do  it  is  indefensible,  un- 
less, indeed,  the  work  is  not  important  or 
urgent.  .  .  .  There  are,  moreover,  great 
forces  astir  throughout  the  world  which  will 
not  wait  for  their  permanent  die  and  stamp. 
If  we  do  not  seize  them  in  this  generation 
and  claim  them  for  God,  they  will  set  and 
harden  in  permanently  atheistic  form.  The 
magnitude  of  the  missionary  enterprise,  the 
difBculties,  and  the  urgency  of  the  task,  for- 
bid all  waste  and  inefficiency,  and  demand 
unity.  ...  In  the  second  place,  the 
elementary  needs  of  the  peoples  we  are  to 
reach  call  primarily  for  what  is  fundamental 
and  essential  in  Christianity.  The  great  evils 
of  the  world  are  the  elementary  moral  evils 
of  impurity,  inequality,  and  hopelessness. 
The  world  does  not  know  the  character  of 
God,  and  therefore  it  is  unclean ;  the  world 
does  not  know  the  love  of  God,  and  there- 
fore men  are  not  brothers ;  the  world  does 
not  know  the  life  of  God,  and  therefore  men 
despair  alike  of  the  present  and  the  future. 


The  Restoration  of  a  United  Church    97 

And  these  three  things :  the  character  of 
God,  and  the  love  of  God,  and  the  Ufe  of 
God,  are  not  the  things  on  which  we  dis- 
agree. They  constitute  the  great  fundamen- 
tal and  elementary  things  in  Christianity, 
and  it  is  for  these  and  not  for  any  of  the 
points  about  which  we  are  at  variance  that 
the  world  primarily  calls.  It  wants  Christ, 
and  that  is  all.  ...  In  the  third  place, 
the  definiteness  of  the  missionary  aim  pro- 
vides for  unity.  That  aim,  as  has  been  re- 
peatedly pointed  out,  is  the  establishment 
of  strong  national  churches  which  shall  be 
self-propagating,  self-supporting,  self-govern- 
ing, the  naturalization  of  Christianity  in  the 
national  life  of  the  different  non-Christian 
peoples.  '  The  aim  of  all  missions  in  India,' 
says  Professor  Christlieb  of  Bonn,  'should 
be  to  create  an  independent  Church  in  the 
future,  neither  Episcopalian,  nor  Presby- 
terian, nor  Congregational,  but  the  outcome 
of  the  national  spirit.  For,  now  that  people 
are  coming  over  to  Christianity  in  masses, 
the  question  as  to  the  formation  of  a  Protes- 
tant National  Indian  Church  must  become 
ever  more  and  more  a  burning  one.'  It  is 
sometimes  alleged  that  even  if  we  accept 
this  view  at  home,  the  native  Christians 
themselves  will  not  endorse  it,  that  they  dis- 


98     New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

avow  our  ideal  and  are  conscientious  denomi- 
nationaiists.  There  have  been  instances  of 
this,  but  they  have  been  exceptional.  In 
many  fields  the  great  mass  of  native  Chris- 
tians do  not  know  of  these  different  denomi- 
nations. They  are  Christians  or  believers  in 
Jesus,  and  while  they  may  know  the  difference 
between  Protestant  and  Catholics,  they  are 
entirely  capable  of  amalgamation  in  one 
common  evangelical  Christian  Church.  Na- 
tive Christian  leaders  are  sometimes  opposed 
to  such  a  movement  because  they  prefer  to 
be  supported  by  foreign  funds,  and  they 
realize  that  these  are  more  certain  of  con- 
tinuance in  subsidized  denominational  native 
churches.  When  all  the  native  Christians 
unite,  it  means  self-support  and  the  whole- 
some exercise  of  control  by  the  body  of 
native  lay  Christians.  Some  native  agents 
do  not  relish  this,  but  the  best  men  do. 
They  have  seen  the  right  ideal  and  they  are 
working  for  it.  Missionaries  should  help 
them.  The  best  are  eagerly  doing  so.  The 
Bishop  of  Lucknow  spoke  plain  words  on 
this  point  at  the  Bengal  Church  Missionary 
Conference  in  1882:  *Yes,  brethren,  let  us 
not  deceive  ourselves  in  this  matter ;  the  sin 
and  shame  of  the  disunion  which  exists 
among  native  Christians  rest  almost  entirely 


The  Restoration  of  a  United  Church    99 

with  us  European  missionaries.  It  is  we 
who  are  guilty ;  we  do  not  conciliate  our 
brethren,  and  have  often  carried  ourselves 
stiffly  and  as  though  we  had  a  monopoly  of 
the  grace  of  God ;  and  the  nonconformist  mis- 
sionaries have  needlessly  perpetuated  their 
sectarianism  and  imposed  it  upon  their  con- 
verts in  this  heathen  country,  where  often 
the  original  cause  of  difference  has  no  exist- 
ence.' 

"  God  forgive  us  all,  for  we  are  verily  guilty 
concerning  our  brethren.  How  should  they 
know,  how  should  they  be  able  to  stand 
out  for  union  against  those  whom  they  re- 
gard as  their  spiritual  fathers  ?  No,  it  is  we 
who  are  to  blame,  we  with  our  pharisaism 
and  our  bigotry  and  our  want  of  brotherly 
love.  Let  us  not  attempt  to  excuse  or  hide 
our  fault,  but,  frankly  acknowledging  it  to 
God  and  one  another  and  our  native  breth- 
ren, try  to  make  amends,  and  before  it  be- 
comes too  late,  begin  to  strive  sincerely  and 
honestly  to  put  away  these  unhappy  divisions 
and  build  up  the  Church  of  Christ  in  godly 
union  and  concord." 

Thus  the  salvation  of  the  far-ofT  nations 
waits  upon  the  union  at  home  of  the 
churches  of  Jesus  Christ.  But  it  will  take 
great  minds  and  great  souls  to  consummate 


lOO    New  opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

that  union.  It  is  a  great  task  for  young 
men  who  want  to  be  empire  builders.  Thus, 
the  exigencies  of  missions  are  going  to 
compel  church  union  at  home,  as  it  has 
already  been  compelled  on  the  field.  At 
home  the  case  is  similar.  Our  cities  are  full 
of  a  great  pagan,  epicurean,  irreligious  mul- 
titude, as  well  as  thousands  of  evil-doers 
and  criminals.  Great  hordes  of  pleasure- 
seekers,  self-centred  rich  and  poor,  free- 
thinking  Jews,  atheistical  groups  from  old 
lands,  millions  of  foreigners  outside  the  Amer- 
ican churches,  the  theatre  and  music  halls 
claiming  our  youth,  a  powerfully  organized 
liquor  interest — all  this  and  more  facing  the 
Church  in  America !  All  prophetic — yes,  all 
sensible — men,  laymen  as  well  as  ministers 
are  seeing  that  the  foes  of  the  Lord  are  too 
great  to  be  met  by  a  divided  Church,  even 
though  the  sects  have  ceased  quarrelling  and 
make  complimentary  remarks  to  one  another. 
It  is  either  church  union  or  paganism,  and 
we  have  got  to  face  this  fact  soon.  Indeed, 
nothing  has  done  more  to  bring  about  good 
feeling  between  Protestants  and  Roman 
Catholics  in  some  of  our  great  cities  than 
the  common  consciousness  that  the  paganism 
of  the  cities  could  never  be  stemmed,  to  say 
nothing  of  being  overcome,  without  the  har- 


The  Restoration  of  a  United  Church     loi 

monious  efforts  of  the  two  churches,  if  not 
the  united.  What  uselessness,  what  utter 
absurdity  and  foolishness  for  two  churches 
to  be  fighting  each  other  when  a  great  wave 
is  bearing  down  upon  both.  The  question 
\s  paganism  or  Christianity,  which  is  to  have 
our  cities  ?  Paganism  surely  will  win  unless 
all  denominations  are  united  against  it.  No 
one  denomination  is  great  enough  to  con- 
quer it,  or  perhaps  even  save  itself.  Many 
are  even  thinking  that  these  very  exigencies 
of  sure  conquest  and  self-preservation  are  go- 
ing to  force  reunion  between  the  most  oppos- 
ing sects. 

The  conviction  is  growing  very  fast,  espe- 
cially among  the  laymen,  that  the  Church 
has  got  to  adjust  itself  to  the  new  coopera- 
tive and  unifying  tendencies  of  the  day.  In 
our  time  small  businesses  are  everywhere 
combining  into  one  great  organization  for 
the  sake  of  efficiency.  The  great  sin  of  our 
day  is  waste.  Men  refuse  to  contribute 
money  for  a  church  which  is  competing  with 
five  other  churches  in  the  community  that 
needs  only  one  and  can  support  only  one. 
One  fully  equipped  and  strongly  manned 
church  can  do  more  for  the  kingdom  than 
five  weak  and  struggling  congregations. 
This  is   turning  the  minds  of  many,  espe- 


102    New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

daily  in  country  places,  toward  church 
union. 

The  writer  believes,  from  the  long  and  care- 
ful consideration  of  the  four  conditions  men- 
tioned above,  that  church  union  is  mevitable^ 
and  perhaps  will  come  in  this  century.  But  it 
will  not  come  until  we  get  many  prophetic  men 
into  the  ministry  ;  men  who  see  largely  ;  men 
who  feel  that  the  great  and  eternal  truths  are 
the  only  things  that  count  in  so  great  and 
divine  an  institution  as  the  Church  of  the  liv- 
ing God ;  men  who  refuse  to  measure  God 
or  set  bounds  to  His  operations  by  any  man^ 
made  ordinances  or  articles ;  men  who  re- 
alize that  God  is  so  great  that  no  one  sacra- 
ment, ordinance  or  denomination  can  contain 
Him  or  be  sufficient  channel  for  His  opera- 
tion. These  are  the  men  we  need.  When 
they  come,  then  church  union  will  come 
quickly.  We  hope  some  young  men,  read- 
ing these  words,  will  respond  and  see  that 
here  is  the  greatest  opportunity  for  com- 
manding leadership  in  our  day.  For  the 
encouragement  of  these  men  we  want  to  say 
two  things. 

The  first  is  this :  Church  union  is  making 
great  strides  in  our  day,  because  a  great  num- 
ber have  seen  these  things.  It  has  gone  further 
in  the  foreign  mission  field  than  elsewhere 


The  Restoration  of  a  United  Church     1 03 

For  a  long  time  missionaries  in  India,  China, 
and  Japan,  have  practiced  territorial  limita- 
tion. One  territory  has  been  set  apart  to  one 
denomination,  the  adjoining  one  to  another, 
and  they  have  endeavoured  not  to  overlap. 
For  a  long  time  the  missionaries  of  all  de- 
nominations have  held  frequent  conferences 
together  to  consider  their  common  task. 
The  federation  of  churches,  and  of  hospitals 
and  of  evangelistic  societies  of  many  denom- 
inations have  long  existed  in  the  foreign 
fields,  and  have  worked  together.  And  now 
real  and  actual  church  union  is  proceeding  at 
a  rapid  pace.  In  China  there  are  several 
colleges  maintained  by  three  or  four  denom- 
inations, and  with  representatives  of  the  dif- 
ferent communions  upon  the  faculties,  even 
in  the  theological  schools.  In  Amoy  the 
Reformed  Church  of  America,  the  Presbyte- 
rian Church  of  England,  and  the  London 
Mission  unite  in  one  theological  college. 
Plans  are  now  being  developed  in  England 
for  a  great  Christian  university  in  China,  sup- 
ported and  taught  by  members  of  all  denom- 
inations. In  India,  organic  union  has  been 
accomplished  of  Congregational  and  Presby- 
terian churches  of  one  or  two  branches.  In 
Japan  and  Africa  there  have  been  remark- 
able instances.     The  movement  grows  rap- 


104    New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

idly  and  is  going  to  spur  on  the  movement 
at  home — not  the  first  time  missions  have 
reacted  on  the  home  church  to  bless  them.* 
But  meantime  the  movement  for  union  has 
become  great  at  home.  Practically  all  the 
Protestant  denominations  are  now  federated 
in  the  Federal  Council  of  Churches  of  Christ 
in  America.  Through  this  great  Federation 
the  Protestants  of  the  nation  speak  unitedly 
on  great  social  and  national  questions.  The 
Council  has  secured  the  federation  of 
churches  in  different  states  and  cities.  It 
has  various  commissions,  such  as  the  Com- 
mission on  Social  Service,  and  the  Commis- 
sion on  Peace  and  Arbitration,  which  repre- 
sent all  the  churches.  It  is  annually  binding 
the  churches  more  and  more  closely  together 
in  service  and  this  is  the  way  some  think  or- 
ganic union  will  ultimately  come.  Those 
who  work  together  after  a  time  learn  to  pray 
together.  All  of  the  denominations  are  form- 
ing commissions  on  church  unity  and  a 
movement  is  now  on  foot,  led  by  the  Com- 
mission on  Faith  and  Order  of  the  Episcopal 
Church,  to  bring  all  the  denominations  of  the 

i  No  one  should  fail  to  read  the  remarkable  "  Report  of 
Commission  VIII  on  CoSperation  and  the  Promotion  of 
Unity  "  of  the  World  Missionary  Conference.  It  is  published 
by  the  Fleming  H.  Revell  Company,  of  New  York. 


The  Restoration  of  a  United  Church     105 

world  together  in  a  great  denominational 
council.  Furthermore,  everywhere  instances 
of  actual  unity  are  becoming  more  and 
more  common — in  Scotland,  Canada,  and  the 
United  States.  This  century  is  going  to  wit- 
ness wonderful  reconciliations. 

The  last  word  is  this :  The  great  day  of 
the  Church  is  before  it.  It  is  soon  going  to 
forget  its  ancient  quarrels  and,  allowing  full 
liberty  of  thought  and  belief  concerning  the 
lesser  things,  is  going  to  unite  on  the  simple 
basis  of  the  acceptance  of  Jesus  Christ  as  the 
Lord  of  Life,  and  His  teaching  as  guide  for 
conduct,  and  His  mind  towards  man  and  na- 
ture as  the  true  philosophy  of  life,  and  is 
then  going  forward  wich  an  undivided  front 
and  an  irresistible  appeal  and  an  unconquer- 
able majesty  to  sweep  the  old  evils  from  the 
world  and  build  here  the  new  city  of  God. 
Happy  that  young  man  who  leads  in  this  di- 
vine and  not  far-off  consummation. 


XI 

THE  ENLARGED  ETHICAL  OPPORTUNITY 

FOR  nineteen  hundred  years  the  Church 
has  been  concerned  with  the  ethics  of 
the  individual.  There  have  been 
some  notable  exceptions,  but  they  are  few. 
Even  where  the  Church  has  entered  the  arena 
of  social  and  political  life  it  has  been  to  define 
the  attitude  the  individual  Christian  should 
take  towards  society  or  towards  the  state — 
never  the  attitude  one  society  should  assume 
towards  the  other,  never  the  duties  of  one  nation 
to  another.  When  she  has  sat  in  judgment  it 
has  been  upon  individuals,  not  upon  nations. 
The  creeds  she  has  written  are  for  individuals, 
the  doctrines  she  has  formulated  are  for  them, 
the  rules  of  conduct  she  has  prescribed  are  for 
persons,  her  redemptive  efforts  have  been  di- 
rected upon  the  saving  of  the  individual  soul. 
This  work  she  has  done  superbly,  and  she 
has  raised  up  in  every  community  saints  who 
have  been  the  leaven  of  society,  the  saviours 
of  the  community,  the  lights  of  the  world. 
What  progress  social  bodies  have  made 
towards  the  evidence  of  the  Christian  spirit, 
io6 


The  Enlarged  Ethical  Opportunity    107 

and  what  few  instances  of  Christian  practices 
one  nation  has  bestowed  upon  another,  have 
been  largely  due  to  the  impact  of  these  indi- 
viduals upon  the  group. 

But  in  our  day  a  new  vision  has  come  to 
the  Church.  She  has  seen  that  the  kingdoms 
of  this  world  belong  to  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
as  well  as  to  some  people  who  inhabit  them. 
She  has  seen  that  the  principles  of  intercom- 
munication, which  Jesus  Christ  made  final 
and  eternal  for  individuals,  must  be  absolute 
and  fundamental  for  the  intercourse  of  groups 
of  men  and  nations.  She  has  seen  that  the 
rules  of  conduct  for  one  man  towards  his 
brother  man,  the  laws  that  govern  his  rela- 
tionships towards  him,  must  also  be  exactly 
the  same  rules  and  laws  that  govern  the  re- 
lations of  one  corporation  towards  another  and 
one  nation  towards  another.  She  has  seen  that 
she  is  here  to  redeem  nations  from  their  evil 
ways  as  she  has  redeemed  men.  The  Church 
has  just  begun  gloriously  to  realize  that  there 
can  be  no  double  standard  of  ethics  in  the 
universe  of  God,  and  that  therefore  there  is 
but  one  ethic  for  men  and  nations.  What  is 
wrong  for  a  man  is  wrong  for  a  group  of 
men,  or  for  a  nation,  and  conversely,  what  is 
right  is  right  eternally  and  for  all  men  and 
organizations.     If  it  is  wrong  for  a  man  to 


lo8    New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

steal  from  another  man,  it  is  equally  wrong 
for  a  nation  to  take  what  does  not  belong  to 
it.  If  it  is  wrong  for  a  man  to  kill  his  neigh- 
bour, it  is  just  as  wrong  for  one  nation  to  des- 
troy another  nation  in  God's  beautiful  world. 
If  it  is  wrong  for  a  man  to  cherish  revenge 
towards  another  man,  it  is  similarly  wrong  for 
a  nation  to  revenge  itself  upon  another.  If 
it  is  wrong  for  a  man  to  sit  in  judgment  upon 
his  own  case,  so,  too,  it  defeats  justice  where 
a  nation  insists  on  judging  its  own  case.  If 
it  is  right  and  a  Christian  duty  for  a  man 
to  practice  mercy,  forgiveness  and  charity 
towards  his  neighbour,  even  though  he  have  a 
dispute  with  him,  so  it  is  right  and  the  duty 
of  a  nation  to  practice  mercy  and  forgiveness 
towards  another.  If  the  fundamental  law  of 
Christianity  is  the  right  law  for  a  man, 
namely,  that  he  forget  his  own  rights  some- 
what, for  the  good  of  the  neighbourhood,  or 
the  nation,  and  sacrifice  himself  for  the  well- 
fare  of  the  whole,  then  this  is  the  ultimate  law 
for  nations.  And  it  will  never  be  the  univer- 
sal law  for  men  until  it  becomes  the  law  of 
groups  of  men  and  nations. 

The  task  of  the  twentieth  century  is  going 
to  be  just  this  application  of  Christianity 
to  national  relationships  as  it  has  already 
been  applied  to  individual  relationships.     The 


The  Enlarged  Ethical  Opportunity     109 

Church  is  to  bring  nations  under  the  sway  of 
the  Gospel  as  she  has  brought  men.  She  is 
going  to  redeem  nations  from  their  present 
pagan  principles  and  practices  of  intercourse 
to  the  acceptance  of  the  law  of  brotherhood 
under  which  Christian  men  already  live. 
She  is  going  to  destroy  the  present  dualism 
of  morality  and  bring  men  and  nations  under 
the  one  eternal  morality  of  Jesus  Christ. 
Here  is  the  call  to  the  young  man  who  wants 
to  undertake  some  absolutely  new  task  and 
one  of  the  greatest  magnitude.  Perhaps  it  is 
the  most  stupendous  new  task  before  the 
Church,  calling,  as  it  does,  for  a  marvel- 
lous faith  in  the  scope  and  power  of  the  Gos- 
pel to  overthrow  deep-rooted  customs  of  cen- 
turies— race  prejudices,  national  hatreds,  false 
patriotism,  vested  interests,  militarism  as  the 
universal  basis  of  society — -and  a  statesman 
like  ability  to  cope  wisely  with  great  problems, 
and  to  construct  a  new  machinery  through 
which  the  new  ethics  may  operate  for  right- 
eousness, perhaps  to  federate  the  nations  of 
the  world  into  a  unity  as  now  the  states  of  a 
nation  are  organized.  There  is  no  place  open 
in  all  the  institutions  of  the  world  which  of- 
fers so  great  an  opportunity  for  the  operation 
of  consecrated  genius  as  the  Church  offers 
right  here,   in  her  task  of  transforming  the 


lio    New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

ethics    underlying    the    interrelationship   oi 
nations. 

We  said  that  this  was  to  be  the  task  of  the 
twentieth  century.  Let  us  say,  for  the  en- 
couragement of  any  young  man  who  may 
have  been  somewhat  stirred  by  this  great 
opportunity,  that  not  only  has  the  Church 
seen  that  this  is  her  new,  great  task  and  call, 
but  she  has  already  plunged  into  it  with  a 
zeal  that  has  accomplished  wonders.  All 
this  modern  international  movement,  this 
new  triumph  one  sees  and  hears  everywhere 
of  peace  and  good-will  among  nations,  is 
only  the  first  manifestation  of  this  new  move- 
ment of  the  Church  to  bring  nations  under 
the  Gospel  as  she  has  brought  men.  Peace, 
arbitration  treaties,  world  federation,  perma- 
nent Hague  courts,  parliaments  of  men, 
world  unity — it  is  all  simply  that  nations 
shall  treat  each  other  just  as  good.  Christian 
men  act  towards  each  other,  and  settle  the 
same  disputes  in  the  same  way.  The  Church 
is  saying  to-day  :  "  Christian  men  live  to  help 
each  other,  not  to  hurt  and  despoil  each 
other.  Christian  nations  should  so  live ; " 
and  the  result  is  a  parliament  of  nations  meet- 
ing regularly  at  The  Hague  to  consider  the 
things  that  pertain  to  the  common  welfare  of 
the  world.     The  Church  is  saying  in  this  cen- 


,  The  Enlarged  Ethical  Opportunity    ill 

tury,  **  Christian  men  long  ago  learned  to  settle 
their  disputes  without  killing  each  other ;  it  is 
time  the  nations  learned  the  Christian  way," 
and,  as  a  result,  the  century  opens  with  a 
Permanent  Court  of  Nations,  with  the  differ- 
ent governments  of  the  world  signing  trea- 
ties, and  agreeing  to  arbitrate  their  differences 
before  this  court.  These  treaties  are  rapidly 
multiplying,  and  they  are  becoming  more  and 
more  inclusive  in  their  nature.  The  twentieth 
century  has  witnessed  one  hundred  of  them 
in  the  first  ten  years.  The  United  States  has 
caught  a  vision  of  this  new  task  of  Christian- 
ity and  is  offering  unlimited  arbitration  trea- 
ties to  the  various  nations  of  the  world. 
Speaking  in  New  York  concerning  them,  the 
President  of  the  United  States  urged  their 
ratification  purely  on  this  basis  :  that  Christian 
nations  should  act  as  Christian  men.  Every- 
where the  movement  to  lift  nations  up  into 
the  same  plane  of  Christian  ethics  on  which 
individuals  now  dwell  is  gathering  momen- 
tum. Already  many  ministers  have  rendered 
superb  service  in  this  movement.  Happy 
that  young  man  who  can  see  the  new  era 
dawning  and  has  some  part  in  leading  the 
nations  into  it,  and  in  preaching  the  great  Gos- 
pel, "  One  morality  throughout  the  whole  king- 
dom of  men  until  it  is  all  God's  kingdom." 


XII 

THE  NEW  EVANGELISM 

IN  the  month  of  April,  191 2,  two  thousand 
men,  many  of  them  laymen,  spent  a 
week  together  discussing  the  great 
theme  of  Men  and  Religion.  It  was  an  en- 
couraging sight  for  those  who  were  leaning 
to  the  opinion  that  men  are  not  interested  in 
religion,  and  was  a  promise  to  many  pastors 
of  a  genuine  revival  of  religion.  Indeed,  one 
of  the  things  this  great  group  of  men  more 
often  spoke  of  was  a  revival  of  real  religion. 
In  almost  every  meeting  the  word  evangelism 
was  to  be  heard.  But  in  almost  every  in- 
stance it  was  coupled  with  the  word  **  new." 
The  new  evangelism  along  with  social  service 
was  the  dominant  note  of  this  significant  and 
remarkable  gathering.  The  Report  of  the 
Commission  on  Evangelism  as  it  stands  in 
book  form  is  intensely  interesting,  echoing 
as  it  does  the  feeling  of  the  Congress.  The 
noticeable  thing  about  it  is,  that  while  it  em- 
phasizes the  necessity  of  winning  the  indi- 
vidual soul  for  Christ,  it  recognizes  that  the 
methods  of  evangelism  may  have  to  be  quite 
112 


The  New  Evangelism  1 1 3 

different  from  those  of  former  days.  There 
must  be  a  new  evangelism  to  meet  the  new 
age.  But  this  new  evangelism  may  be 
fraught  with  greater  success  than  ever  was 
the  old  in  its  greatest  days,  and  it  certainly 
offers  a  wider  and  more  alluring  opportunity 
to  the  young  man  of  to-day  than  the  old 
could  ever  have  done. 

The  older  evangelism  accomplished  great 
and  wonderful  things.  Some  of  the  holiest 
days  the  world  has  known  was  when  Wesley 
and  Whitefield  and  Deems  and  Moody 
caused  a  new  visitation  of  the  spirit  to  ap- 
pear in  shops  and  homes  of  the  whole  na- 
tion. It  was  these  days  that  caused  the 
smouldering  fire  to  flame  up  again  on  the 
altar  of  the  churches.  Its  appeal  was  marked 
by  two  outstanding  features.  First,  it  wrought 
upon  the  emotions,  producing  an  ecstatic 
state  of  being,  and  secondly,  it  called  for  an 
immediate  decision  ;  one  without  any  prepa- 
ration and  without  any  provision  for  the 
future  except  the  presence  of  the  Holy 
Spirit.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  after  all  criti- 
cisms have  been  given  full  weight,  and  their 
truth  often  recognized,  the  results  of  this 
evangelization  were  not  only  wonderful  trans- 
formations, **  the  eternal  miracle,"  but  were 
permanent  and  abiding  to  a  degree  beyond 


114    N^w  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

that  generally  believed.  After  reading  three 
such  books  as  Prof.  William  James*  "  Varie- 
ties of  Religious  Experience,"  E.  D.  Star- 
buck's  **  The  Psychology  of  Religion/*  and 
Harold  Begbie's  "  Twice  Born  Men,"  it  is 
absolutely  impossible  to  ever  doubt  the  abid- 
ing as  well  as  the  transforming  effects  of 
many  of  these  remarkable  conversions.  But 
at  the  same  time  one  has  to  acknowledge, 
for  all  the  facts  are  before  him,  that  the  older 
appeal  does  not  meet  with  the  same  general 
response  to-day.  The  surest  signs  of  this, 
perhaps,  is  the  fact  that  the  evangelist  of 
to-day  himself  recognizes  this  truth,  and  does 
not  depend  upon  engendering  an  emotional 
exaltation  of  vast  multitudes,  sweeping  them 
by  hundreds  into  the  kingdom  of  God.  The 
reasons  for  this  change  are  several,  but 
chiefly  these :  Our  nature  is  much  more 
complex  than  was  that  of  our  fathers  and 
does  not  respond  to  such  simple  and  direct 
appeals.  We  have  come  to  somewhat  dis- 
trust the  decisions  made  under  the  very  high 
pressure  of  an  ecstatic  state  of  mind.  Our 
culture  has  made  us  cautious  and  it  has  also 
made  us  reserved,  so  that  we  do  not  so  easily 
yield  to  the  play  of  either  music  or  oratory 
upon  our  emotions.  Again,  the  average  man 
has  come  under  the  spirit  of  the  age  and  is 


The  New  Evangelism  1 1 5 

more  concerned  in  serving  humanity  than  in 
saving  his  own  soul.  Perhaps  he  is  neglect- 
ing the  culture  of  his  own  soul  too  much, 
forgetting  that  after  all  there  is  a  mystical 
relation  between  his  soul  and  God  whose  joy 
should  not  be  sacrificed  because  of  the  en- 
richment it  brings.  But  it  is  true  that  he 
does  not  respond  to  an  appeal  to  save  his 
soul  as  once  he  did.  One  other  reason  is 
that  education  has  so  decidedly  become  the 
thought  habit  of  the  age  that  we  all  think, 
religiously  as  well  as  otherwise,  in  terms  of 
growth  and  continued  process.  The  life  of 
the  spirit  as  well  as  the  strength  of  the  mind 
is  the  result  of  a  continuous  education  in  the 
things  of  Christ. 

Now  all  this  need  not  be  discouraging,  al- 
though it  has  been  so  to  some  people.  Many 
are  asking  why  do  we  not  have  great  re- 
vivals again  as  once  we  did.  It  is  not  be- 
cause men  are  any  less  responsive  to  the 
Spirit  of  God,  but  simply  that  they  do  not 
to-day  respond  to  the  same  appeal  or  express 
their  religious  life  so  much  in  the  older  ways. 
There  is  a  new  generation  with  its  new 
temperament  and  thought  habits  and  it  must 
be  won  to  Christ  in  its  own  language  and  by 
pathways  natural  to  its  feet.  Consequently 
we  have  a  **  new  evangelism "  and  it  offers 


Il6    New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

wonderful  opportunities  to  the  man  who 
wants  to  bring  men  to  shape  and  order  their 
lives  after  the  pattern  of  Christ  and  follow 
Him  in  a  divine  and  enthusiastic  devotion  to 
humanity.  One  need  only  watch  the  great 
conventions  of  men  now  everywhere  being 
held,  laymen's  missionary  movements,  broth- 
erhoods, leagues,  and  Men  and  ReUgion  Move- 
ment, to  see  the  methods  of  this  new  appeal 
and  even  to  watch  it  in  operation.  Also  the 
religious  literature  of  the  last  twenty-five 
years  is  a  record  of  the  new  outlook  upon 
the  religious  life.  The  Report  of  the  Com- 
mission on  Evangelization  of  the  Men  and 
Religion  Movement  and  the  discussions  of 
the  Congress,  as  well  as  the  stirring  within 
the  churches  themselves  are  sure  signs  that 
the  new  evangelism  is  coming  to  take  the 
place  of  the  old. 

It  offers  remarkable  opportunities  for  the 
man  who  believes  that  humanity  is  worth 
saving.  In  the  first  place  it  begins  with  the 
boys.  It  says  that  the  best  redemption  is 
prevention.  It  believes  that  there  should  be 
a  preparation  for  conversion  and  that  the 
converted  should  be  cared  for  after  his  re- 
ception into  the  Church.  Consequently,  it 
is  bending  its  efforts  in  every  way  to  save 
the  boys.     It  insists  that  the  boy  should  be 


The  New  Evangelism  117 

taught  religion  from  earliest  years.  It  also 
believes  that  this  religious  training  has  its 
end  in  character  and  actual  acceptance  of 
the  Christian  life.  What  happier  or  more 
fruitful  work  than  to  take  the  boys  and  girls 
of  a  parish  and  instruct  them  in  the  Bible,  in 
morals,  in  manhood,  in  the  great  truths  of 
religion,  in  the  real  meaning  of  life  !  Such  a 
ministry  is  superb,  for  it  is  doing  the  greatest 
work  this  world  ofTers  :  making  men.  When 
all  the  churches  catch  the  spirit  of  the  new 
evangelism,  and  ministers  and  religious 
workers  turn  their  attention  to  the  boys  and 
girls,  hardly  one  will  escape  from  the  gracious 
call  of  Christ.  Here,  too,  the  young  minister 
of  administrative  genius  will  find  great  fields. 
For  the  Sunday-schools  must  all  be  perfected 
towards  the  evangelistic  goal,  and  every 
teacher  be  made  an  evangelist.  All  sorts  of 
organizations,  leagues,  and  societies,  must 
be  used — but  all  conducted  for  saving  the 
boy  for  Christ.  The  Men  and  Religion 
Movement  did  well  to  put  so  fine  an  em- 
phasis upon  the  boys.  Save  them,  and  your 
revival  is  accomplished  before  it  is  under- 
taken. And  it  is  here  that  the  great  energies 
of  the  Church  are  to  be  directed  in  this  cen- 
tury. We  may  even  have  to  have  ministers, 
who,  like  Young  Men's  Christian  Association 


1 18    New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

secretaries,  devote  all  their  time  and  wisdom 
to  the  care  of  youth. 

The  other  outstanding  feature  of  the  new 
evangelism  is,  that  as  Christ  of  old  appealed 
to  men  to  follow  Him  that  they  might  serve 
humanity,  it  calls  to  men  not  so  much  to 
save  themselves,  as  to  give  themselves  to 
the  service  of  the  Lord.  This  is  almost  the 
only  note  heard  in  these  modern  gatherings 
of  men.  **  Link  yourselves  up  with  the 
Church  and  live  the  Christian  life,  that  you 
may  save  other  men  and  save  the  state."  So 
men  are  everywhere  being  won  to  Christ  to- 
day by  being  asked  to  do  Christ's  work. 
What  a  stirring  and  unselfish  appeal  the 
modern  minister  has  to  make.  He  goes  be- 
fore a  group  of  men,  living  for  self  and 
pleasure,  and  voices  the  call  of  the  great 
world :  •*  Here  is  the  world  in  the  hands  of 
evil  men.  Injustice  prevails  everywhere. 
The  saloon  has  it  in  its  grip.  Vice  addresses 
our  youth  on  the  very  streets.  Poverty 
claims  its  millions.  Disease  ravages  whole 
sections  because  of  the  greed  of  property 
owners.  Corrupt  governments  menace  our 
cities.  Little  children  are  degraded  by  hard 
labour  and  improper  foods.  Gamblers  en- 
tice our  youth.  Debasing  influences  are  all 
about  them.     Capital  and   labour  war  with 


The  New  Evangelism  119 

each  other.  Nation  flies  at  the  throat  of 
nation  in  war.  Everywhere  Christ's  little 
children  are  in  captivity.  Come,  oh,  strong 
men,  over  into  this  Macedonia  and  deUver 
them.  Devote  your  fine  manhood  to  the 
freeing  of  the  captives,  to  the  breaking  of 
their  bonds,  to  the  healing  of  their  wounds, 
to  the  saving  of  them  from  the  enemy,  to 
helping  Christ  build  His  beautiful  city  and 
to  the  establishment  of  the  republic  of  God 
in  the  earth."  That  is  the  appeal  of  the  new 
evangelism — to  leave  our  sins  and  make  our- 
selves holy  in  Jesus  Christ,  for  the  sake  of 
the  world.  Men  are  everywhere  yielding  to 
this  appeal  to-day,  and  a  great  revival  may 
be  upon  us  if  enough  young  men  consecrate 
themselves  to  become  its  prophets. 

And,  as  a  final  word,  let  us  remember  that 
one  tenet  of  the  new  evangelism  is  that  every 
minister  is  to  be  his  own  evangelist.  There 
are  still  a  few  men  who  can  gather  great 
masses  together  and  addressing  their  wills 
(for  even  they  use  the  new  method  of  direct 
appeal  to  the  will  and  hold  out  the  life  of 
service  as  the  inducement  to  follow  Christ) 
move  many  to  accept  the  life  of  the  spirit. 
But  their  numbers  and  influence  grow  less 
and  less.  If  the  men  of  our  modern  towns 
and  cities  are  going  to  be  persuaded  to  lead 


120    New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

the  Christian  life  it  has  got  to  be  done  by  the 
pastors.  Here  is  the  challenge  both  of  the 
rural  districts  and  of  the  cities — a  challenge 
which  some  tell  us  is  not  being  answered  as 
it  should  bco  Vast  areas  of  our  great  cities, 
and  large  areas  of  our  rural  regions  are  call- 
ing for  hundreds  of  young  men  from  our  col- 
leges to  plunge  into  the77i  as  Dr.  Grenfell 
plunged  into  Labrador,  and  clean  them  up. 
So,  too,  the  preaching  of  this  age  will  take 
upon  itself  a  new  directness  that  will  call  for 
all  the  courage  and  manhood  we  have.  No 
one  has  better  characterized  this  preaching 
than  has  Rev.  W.  J.  Dawson,  D.  D.,  in  "The 
Evangelistic  Note,"  and  we  quote  his  fine 
words  here  : 

"The  pulpit  has  traditions  which  are  a 
trammel  upon  free  utterance.  Intense  and 
passionate  utterance  is  liable  to  be  misunder- 
stood ;  it  is  often  not  welcomed,  and  it  is  al- 
ways deprecated  by  those  with  whom  decorum 
counts  for  more  than  truth.  And  yet  I  be- 
lieve no  preacher  is  so  generally  respected  in 
the  long  run  as  the  preacher  who  is  fearless. 
I  am  led  to  think  that  in  every  church,  how- 
ever cultured  and  accustomed  to  restraint  its 
congregation  may  be,  there  are  multitudes  of 
people  who  would  hail  with  joy  the  brave 
voice  that  spoke  in  complete  disregard  of 


The  New  Evangelism  121 

convention.  I  believe  that  we  ministers  are 
in  most  instances  much  too  mealy-mouthed 
in  our  applications  of  truth.  We  do  not  come 
to  grips  with  the  conscience  ;  we  move,  high- 
poised,  on  a  wide  circle  round  our  prey,  and 
never  drop  with  the  hawk's  swiftness  and 
deadly  impact  upon  it ;  and  the  result  is  a 
sense  of  unreality  in  our  performances,  as 
though  the  whole  affair  were  a  stage  illusion 
of  cardboard  armies  in  a  mock  conflict.  I 
have  come  to  think  that  the  chief  cause  for 
the  decline  of  influence  in  the  modern  pulpit 
is  the  lack  of  entire  plain  speaking.  We  are 
the  slaves  of  convention.  We  imagine  that 
because  a  congregation  is  cultured  and 
wealthy  it  knows  nothing  about  sin.  For  my 
part  I  confess  that  since  I  have  been  at  pains 
to  understand  the  constituent  elements  of  my 
own  congregation  a  very  different  conclusion 
has  been  forced  upon  me.  I  know  now  that 
I  can  address  no  congregation  in  a  great  city 
that  is  not  likely  to  include  the  drunkard,  the 
adulterer,  the  youth  of  impure  life,  the  woman 
beset  by  temptation,  the  commercial  rogue, 
and  the  man  who  draws  his  revenues  from 
wrong.  Face  to  face  with  these  awful  reali- 
ties of  life  the  speech  of  the  preacher  must 
also  be  a  real  thing,  or  it  will  be  useless." 


XIII 
THE  MINISTER  FOR  TO-DAY 

IN  the  concluding  chapter  the  author 
would  like  to  enumerate  some  of  the 
qualifications  demanded  of  the  minister 
of  to-day.  He  does  not  pretend  that  this  list 
is  exhaustive.  Neither  could  he  say  that 
these  qualifications  were  not  necessary  in  all 
times.  But  in  the  light  of  what  we  have  been 
saying,  and  facing  the  peculiar  problems  of 
our  time,  these  gifts  and  graces  seem  of  out- 
standing significance. 

The  minister  of  to-day  must,  first  of  all,  be 
prophetic.  That  is,  he  should  have  not  only 
a  firm  belief  in  God,  but  also  a  belief,  based 
on  experience,  that  God  speaks  to-day  as  dis- 
tinctly as  He  has  ever  spoken  in  olden  times, 
and  that  the  pure  and  chosen  soul  can  hear 
His  message  as  did  Isaiah  of  old,  and  become 
God's  spokesman  to  humanity,  that  is,  His 
prophet.  Perhaps  the  one  outstanding  weak- 
ness of  much  of  our  modern  preaching  is  that 
it  seems  second  hand.  The  preacher  is  sim- 
ply repeating  or  interpreting  to  the  people 
something  some  one  once  said  about  God. 

122 


The  Minister  for  To-Day  123 

But  when  one  opens  his  Bible  its  voices  speak 
with  all  the  freshness  and  immediateness  of 
nature  speaking  to  the  senses.  It  is  because 
Isaiah,  Hosea,  Micah,  and  the  other  great 
preachers  of  Israel  got  their  message  directly 
from  God  and  spoke  for  God  to  the  people. 
This  is  what  makes  a  prophet, — to  speak  for 
God.  Paul  so  realized  that  this  was  the  one 
indispensable  qualification  for  a  successful 
preacher  that  he  took  pains  to  say  that  he  got 
his  message  of  Christ  straight  from  Christ 
Himself.  What  this  age  needs  more  than 
anything  else  is  prophets.  The  age  of  great 
preaching  will  come  again  when  great  souls 
speak  face  to  face  with  God,  and  then  go 
from  Him  with  His  word  for  His  people. 
The  great  value  of  the  Bible  is  not  that  it 
tells  us  what  the  prophet  said,  that  we  should 
merely  repeat  it,  but  that  it  is  the  divinely 
given  way  to  the  realization  of  similar  first- 
hand experience  of  God.  Jesus  Himself  said 
that  He  was  the  "  way  '*  to  the  Father,  and 
prayed  that  His  disciples  might  enjoy  His 
own  intimate  relationship  with  God.  The 
minister  of  to-day  should  speak  authorita- 
tively as  one  who  has  himself  seen  God.  It 
is  a  critical,  incredulous  and  empirical  age. 
It  demands,  with  Thomas,  to  see  the  proof. 
It  is  not  even  satisfied  with  the  authority  of 


124    New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

the  Bible.  If  one  preaches  the  love  of  God 
to  it,  it  will  straightway  demand,  "  How  know 
you  God  is  love  ?  "  The  prophet  can  always 
say,  "  I  have  experienced  that  love.  I  have 
been  face  to  face  with  God  ; "  and  he  begins 
his  message  with  a  '*  Thus  saith  the  Lord," 
or  with  an  *'  I  know  Him  in  whom  I  believe." 
It  is  a  great  and  holy  office,  this  of  prophet, 
and  it  calls  to  young  men  of  great  souls  and 
power  of  vision. 

The  minister  for  to-day  must  have  a  firm 
belief  in  man.  Not  an  unwarranted  belief 
that  man  is  good  and  needs  only  a  little  cod- 
dUng  and  a  little  persuading  to  become  pure 
and  generous.  The  average  man  is  not  good. 
He  is  very  vile.  He  is  full  of  selfishness  and 
secret  sins.  And  much  of  this  talk  about 
the  general  goodness  of  humanity  is  senti- 
mentality and  ungrounded  optimism.  But 
man  is  made  for  God  and  religion.  Human- 
ity has  the  potentiality  of  Christhood,  for 
came  not  Christ  out  of  it,  and  the  Christlike 
disciples !  He  was  created  of  God  for  real 
manhood,  not  for  reversion  to  beasthood,  or 
for  even  respectable  selfishness.  The  race  has 
produced  so  many  thousands  of  good  and  re- 
ligious men,  to  say  nothing  of  several  saints, 
that  this  logical  truth  of  man's  capacity  for 
God  is  confirmed  by  universal   experience. 


The  Minister  for  To-Day  125 

The  minister  for  to-day  must  have  an  un- 
swerving faith  in  this  capacity  of  man  for 
God,  no  matter  what  discouragements  inter- 
vene, if  he  is  to  accomplish  any  worthy  or 
lasting  task.  He  must  believe  that  some 
men  in  every  day  and  every  man  some 
day  will  see  that  he  is  a  child  of  God  and 
claim  his  birthright.  He  must  work  for  man 
with  a  faith  that  he  not  only  can,  but  will, 
respond  to  the  appeal  of  the  highest  in  him. 
It  is  this  faith  that  has  made  some  of  the 
great  preachers  of  our  time. 

The  minister  for  to-day  must  have  an  abso- 
lute faith  in  Jesus  Christ.  We  do  not  mean 
that  he  must  hold  any  particular  metaphys- 
ical theory  about  the  nature  of  His  person,  but 
he  must  be  sure  that  He  is  the  son  of  the  Fa- 
ther, and  reveals  both  the  nature  and  the 
will  of  God.  He  must  just  as  unswervingly 
believe  that  Christ  reveals  the  final  nature  of 
man.  If  there  is  no  mirror  for  both  Godhood 
and  manhood  in  the  world,  the  task  of  the 
minister  is  almost  hopeless,  for  a  very  small 
proportion  of  humanity  have  the  capacity  to 
directly  apperceive  spiritual  beings.  But  let 
the  preacher  go  forth  to-day  with  the  mes- 
sage that  God  is  Christlike,  and  that  conse- 
quently man  is  meant  to  be  Godlike,  and  he 
has  given  the  heart  of  the   Gospel   to   the 


1 26    New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

world.  He  must  believe  in  Christ,  too,  in 
that  he  knows  once  for  all  that  Christ's  phi- 
losophy of  life  is  the  true  and  only  one.  The 
world  says  getting  is  the  end  of  existence, 
and  that  the  worry  of  life  is  for  the  protec- 
tion of  one's  self  and  one's  property  and  one's 
life.  This  is  about  the  sum  and  substance 
of  its  philosophy.  Christ  stands  directly  over 
against  this  philosophy  of  life,  and  in  every 
word  says,  Man  is  here,  not  to  get  but  to 
give,  and  he  is  sent  into  the  world  not  to  pro- 
tect himself,  but  to  protect  and  serve  others, 
no  matter  at  what  cost  to  himself.  Life  is  a 
mission  according  to  Christ's  interpretation 
of  it.  The  preacher  for  to-day  must  thus 
look  out  upon  life  through  Christ's  eyes ; 
have,  as  Paul  said,  "the  mind  of  Christ;" 
believe  that  the  sacrificial  life  is  the  only  nor- 
mal life  of  man.  This  is  the  presentation  of 
Christ  that  will  win  brave  souls. 

The  minister  for  to-day  must  believe  in  his 
own  times.  He  must  have  faith  that  our  time 
is  as  holy  as  was  the  olden  time.  He  must 
believe  that  the  great  movements  sweeping 
through  the  heart  of  society  are  as  much  the 
operations  of  the  Spirit  of  God  as  the  leading 
of  Israel  out  of  the  oppression  in  Egypt.  Our 
time  is  full  of  wonderful  quickenings  of  the 
conscience  of  mankind,  deep  stirrings  of  the 


The  Minister  for  To-Day  127 

human  heart,  passionate  enthusiasms  for  hu- 
manity, growing  determinations  to  rid  the 
world  of  some  of  its  age-long  cruelties,  highly 
organized  warfares  against  lingering  crimes. 
There  has  been  a  new  birth  of  the  social  con- 
sciousness, which  is  manifesting  itself  in  a 
sense  of  the  oneness  of  humanity.  A  new  so- 
ciety and  a  new  world  are  rising  upon  the  vision 
of  select  souls  in  every  nation.  The  preacher 
of  to-day  must  see  in  this  the  revelation  of 
God's  will  and  purpose,  as  of  old  the  proph- 
ets saw  it  in  the  operations  of  Israel's  na- 
tional life.  He  must  be  able  to  discern  the 
secrets  of  the  times  and  lead  men  in  the 
building  of  the  city  of  God.  He  must  be- 
lieve that  the  final  purpose  of  God  for  this 
world  is,  as  Christ  declared,  the  founding  of 
the  kingdom  of  God  in  the  earth,  and  he 
must  see  that  these  enthusiasms  of  our  time 
are  His  methods,  as  well  as  revelations  of 
the  nature  of  the  kingdom.  And,  above  all, 
he  must  believe  in  the  Messianic  character  of 
his  own  nation.  He  must  believe  that  God 
has  raised  up  and  ordained  his  own  country 
to  teach  the  world  some  eternal  truth,  just  as 
He  ordained  Israel.  The  truth  Israel  taught 
was  the  righteous  God  demanding  righteous- 
ness in  His  children.  He  has  ordained  the 
United  States  to  teach  the  world  the  real 


128    New  Opportunities  of  the  Ministry 

brotherhood  of  man.  This  must  be  an  arti- 
cle of  faith  with  the  preacher  of  our  times, 
for  it  is  the  great  truth  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury. God  has  sent  to  us  fifty  nationalities — 
millions  of  men  of  every  race,  language,  tem- 
perament, ideal  and  habit.  He  has  jumbled 
them  all  up  together  in  one  great  melting 
pot.  In  Europe  they  have  hated,  fought,  and 
slain  each  other.  Here  our  nation  must 
transform  them  into  brothers  of  each  other 
and  servants  of  the  Lord.  And  when  the 
work  is  done  the  nation  can  say  to  all  the 
nations,  "  See  how  possible  it  is  for  suspi- 
cious men  of  diflerent  nations  to  become 
brothers  in  the  Lord."  This  is  the  joy  of  the 
Christian  ministry  of  to-day,  that  it  aims  to 
redeem  the  whole  of  life — little  children,  men 
and  women,  nearest  neighbours  and  the  mil- 
lions of  the  East,  commerce  and  industry, 
societies  and  cities,  states  and  nations,  until 
all  the  kingdoms  of  the  world  have  become 
the  kingdom  of  our  Lord  and  of  His  Christ 


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